


The End of a String

by Silvershine



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VII: The Last Jedi
Genre: F/M, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Reylo - Freeform, Romance, Slow Burn, The Force Ships It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-03-01 19:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13301967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvershine/pseuds/Silvershine
Summary: A bridge still exists between the Supreme Leader of the First Order and the rebel known as Rey. As the connection winds tighter, the line between enemy and friend continues to blur, and Rey's loyalties are called into question. A force bond can bring companionship and support, but it's not without its dangers... or delights.Set after The Last Jedi.





	1. The Rains

The sound of rain woke Rey that night. It was still such an alien sound to her ears that she was always roused from sleep to listen with wonder and pleasure at the steady drumming on the roof of her hut. On particularly restless nights she would rise and gather the thin blanket about her shoulders to go sit in the doorway of her modest hut to listen to the rain and breathe in its vitalising smell.

Kashyyyk forest was a curious place of giants, with trees that grew half a mile high and to walk around one might take several minutes. Hardly any light reached the forest floor and Rey had never taken one of the lifts down the long descent to see what lay down there. Sometimes she heard the strange beckoning calls echoing up from far below and decided she did not want to find out what kind of creatures those calls belonged to. Up in the canopy it was safe, providing you did not trip and fall from the network of narrow bridges and walkways that linked the Wookiee villages together. And Wookiees did not exactly believe in handrails.

Rey’s tongue traced over her dry lips and she padded out into the tranquil darkness in search of a rain catcher. Catchers were a kind of gutter that wound its way up a tree like a great long snake, reaching up into the uppermost layers of the canopy where the rain fell most plentifully, unimpeded by the boughs and leaves of the lower layers. The flow of water down these spouts was almost constant, draining into barrels and great bowls or pure, clear water where residents could collect it for bathing, cooking and drinking. 

Rey dipped her hands into one such barrel and lifted the cool water to her lips. How strange that only a few months ago, to have this much water at her disposal would have been unthinkable. She would never have flicked the drops from her fingers like this, or splashed a handful over her face for the sheer pleasure of it. It didn’t matter that much of the water ran down her forearms to drip wastefully on the boards at her feet - there was no one here who might fight or kill her to have access to this precious life-giving resource. She could pour all of it over the side of the platform and in a few more hours the barrell would be full once more. . 

Thirst quenched, Rey returned to her borrowed hut and spent a few minutes straightening her pallet and tidying the books and writing materials she had scattered across the floor from the previous evenings research. She lowered herself back onto her bed and reached to pull the blanket up-

And stopped short.

Rey remained quite still and listened very hard. The patter of raindrops on the roof of the hut seemed louder, and the ambient hum of insect life swelled like they were inside her room. In the low light, her wide eyes scanned every corner, but nothing moved and nothing was out of place.

Still… she felt something.

“Are you there?” she whispered. Her voice felt wrong, too intrusive on the quietness, as if she had spoken in her sleep and woken herself up.

Then the strange feeling passed, like a shadow moving on, letting the light in once more, though nothing on the surface appeared to change. The forest sounds returned to normal and Rey lay back down, pulling the blanket tight to her chin.

It was morning when she next opened her eyes. A pale light filtered in through the gaps in the wooden walls and when she stepped out she was not surprised to see that the forest was filled with steam so thick she could only see a few metres in any direction. Kashyyyk’s forest was heady and warm, and all the rain that had fallen the previous night was on its way back to the sky, ready to fall again tomorrow.

The rest of the Resistance was also beginning to emerge. There were not many of their number left now. Those who had survived the final siege of the Crait mine had splintered once more. Some had gone back to their families to recoup, and others like Poe had moved on to renew old contacts and find recruits. What was left now sought refuge on Kashyyyk, though there were no more than twenty of them here. The Wookiees were a cagey people, still wary of outsiders after the mass enslavements and purges brought by the Empire, but tolerant enough. Leia was often with the Wookiee’s village elder, trying to entice him into a more active role in the Resistance. Leia didn’t have the best grasp of their language, so it was often Rey’s role to act as a translator. There was no one else left alive in the Resistance that spoke it.

This was usually the limit of Rey’s usefulness. While the Resistance hid and tried to recover even a fraction of its former strength, Rey tried to study the old jedi texts and meditate on the force as Luke had once shown her. Neither were easy tasks. Wishing for a break, she tied up her hair and headed out across the wooden walkways that led away between the trees. She let her mind wander as much as her feet and she listened to the force and the way it moved through these ancient trees and swirled in the mist around her. 

In no time at all she had become lost. The fact did not alarm her - there was something comfortably familiar about being neither here nor there. She must have crossed into long abandoned pathways, since not a soul could be seen. 

When a shadow formed in the mist ahead of her, Rey stopped.

It was tempting to turn and walk away. She knew she should do. But something weaker inside her held her in place, waiting and tense.

He moved towards her, breaking through the mist  until he was a clear vision before her. He was slightly altered. His clothing had changed, more ornate, more befitting of a Supreme Leader, and the look of his face… once so open, beseeching and inviting, was closed off and cold.

Kylo Ren watched her for a moment, scanning her body up and down as if searching for something that might please him, yet found nothing. His head moved sharply, as if listening to a voice behind him that she could not hear, then he walked on, brushing past her as if she was not there, until he had disappeared into the mist behind her.

Rey suddenly remembered she could breathe. She felt his anger and his sense of injustice. He blamed her. He might even have hated her, though it was not a hatred born of antipathy, but of being spurned. He felt she had chosen wrongly… and he would not forgive that easily.

No longer in the mood for absent wanderings, Rey returned to the village and sought out her books. She needed to reassure herself that she had made the right decision, even if she sometimes felt her thoughts slipping away to imagine where she might be if she had just taken his hand when he had asked her to. 

She remembered the touch of his bare fingers against hers, and the way a kind of electricity and warmth had spread from the contact, all the way up her arm to curl in the pit of her stomach. It had been such a curious,  _ yearning _ feeling, cut short so soon. She had wanted to know more, to understand this new sensation as she desired to understand the Force.

But perhaps that was not to be.

Rey found her way back to Leia’s side and tried to ignore the way the older woman sometimes looked at her a little too long as if she knew of the doubts and thoughts that pecked at her mind.

She had not told Leia about the bridge that Snoke had built between her mind and Kylo’s. Things were still too raw, and Rey did not wish to give anyone reason to distrust her.

“Are you well?” Leia asked her that day, as they left the village Elder’s hut. Rey nodded meekly, keeping her eyes to the floor.

“Things seem hard now, but we are recovering our contacts every day,” Leia reassured her. “I’m sure we can go more exciting places soon enough.”

But it was not excitement that Rey craved. The quiet solitude of the trees suited her fine. Only… he would keep interrupting it. Sometimes he just looked at her coldly and broke the connection almost immediately. Sometimes she felt the heat of his rage, as he shouted and ranted and mocked her for her childish attachment to ‘the light’ when he could have given her all the power she could have ever wanted.

“I don’t want power!” she had screamed back. “Not at that price!”

“No!” he bellowed, jabbing his finger at her. “You just didn’t want me!”

Things were different on the night he came to her while she slept. She woke slowly, the awareness creeping in like a morning light until she sat up and looked across the space of her small hut. She was not surprised to see him there, sitting in a shadowy corner, his head in his hands.

His newest position weighed on him. Had he ever really wanted it? Rey wanted to hate him, deride him for  _ his _ weakness… but he looked so pitiable and lost. He looked up at her and appeared briefly surprised to see her there, watching him. He winced, as if in despair, and ran his hands through his hair.

“Why won’t you just leave me in peace?” he whispered.

Rey leaned back against the side of her hut, arms loosely clasped around her. “Is that what you want? To never see me again?”

The silence stretched between them. She could see he wasn’t sure he knew the answer to that. His gaze searched her face, perhaps asking himself if he could live with that. Maybe he wished he’d never met her.

“It’s not too late-” she began to say.

“Don’t start. Not again. Please.” His head returned to his hands. She felt the strongest urge to reach out and touch the top of his head, to stroke her fingers over those black curls, and imagined that if she did, then perhaps she could lift this despair he’d given into tonight. Instead she remained in her bed, her arms tightening across her chest.

“Was it all worth it, Ben?” she asked quietly. “The First Order fleet is yours… now what will you do with it?”

“You know, I don’t think I’ll share my plans with a rebel,” he said, lifting his head. 

“You can’t fool me, I know you,” Rey said, narrowing her eyes at him. “I know you better than anyone else alive. You killed Snoke because you made a choice… it was either him or me. There is no master to lead you by the hand anymore, you’re alone. You have no plan, Ben.”

“I have power to shape a galaxy as I see fit,” he said. “What do you have? The last scraps of a dying Resistance? Your allies never came did they? How many of your brave friends have given up and gone home? All you can do is hide now, running from burrow to burrow like a rat, always looking over your shoulder - is that what you wanted?”

Rey looked away, turning her gaze to the dark window where she could hear the rain beating on the boards outside. “I wanted a hero…” she whispered. 

“There is no such thing. Heroes are people, and people… are weak. They’re fallible. They will always let you down. The only one you can ever rely upon is yourself.”

Rey’s gaze turned glassy and for a while she sat in silence, mulling his words over and over. “I used to think the same way as you. Jakku wasn’t a kind place for children. To survive, the only thing we could do was work for someone who could offer protection. A protector always had a price… if you were lucky, all they wanted was your labour. Sometimes I had a good protector, someone kind or more generous than the rest. But even the best will let you down. I’ve been sold, beaten, forgotten… I’ve been betrayed more times than I can remember. A year ago, I  _ knew _ that no one can truly be trusted. And then…”

Kylo Ren watched her curiously. “And then…?”

She liked the way he listened when she spoke, as if every word was important. “And then I met Finn.”

He leaned back, breaking eye contact immediately. 

“Were you hoping I would say that I met you?” she asked, almost amused.

“So you think you can rely on this boy? He’s weak. He fell to my blade with hardly a fight and left you undefended back in the forest. Is that the hero you wanted?” It sounded almost like a sneer but she could see in the downward twist at the corner of his mouth that he feared Finn truly was her hero.

“Have you ever had a friend, Ben?” she asked softly. At his silence she continued. “A friend is someone you know. Someone you can rely on. Someone who will help you and ask for nothing in return. Heroes might not be real, but friends are. Finn, BB8, Leia, I know they’ll always be there for me now, and I’ll always be there for them too.”

Kylo rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I offered you everything. You would have wanted for nothing - thousands would have bent their knee to you with a snap of your fingers. Every person who ever thought they owned you on Jakku could have been brought before you and flayed until they called you their Queen. But you threw that away… because you wanted  _ friends _ instead.”

“To finally have people I can rely on, who rely on me too… it’s all I ever wanted.” She looked at him through her lashes. “You could have thousands kneeling for you, but can you trust them? Or are you just constantly watching your back, waiting for the next guy who fancies becoming Supreme Leader the same way you did?”

She watched him swallow and rise to his feet. Her comment had hit a mark, and suddenly all she felt was pity. She’d lived that life of mistrust and paranoia. It had been a constant exhausting battle, and the only thing that had kept her sane was the story she had told herself each night that her family would soon to free her from that existence. 

“I… could…” she struggled to find the words under his piercing stare. “I mean, I could be considered your friend.”

“Is that what you are?” he asked, hardly giving her time to finish. “Is that what you tell your fellow rebels? That Kylo Ren is your  _ friend _ ?”

Of course it sounded stupid when he said it like that.

“I don’t know what you imagine my life has been like, but don’t imagine that I’m not familiar with the concept of friendship. I had friends once. People I thought I could rely on. People who I trusted. People I would have died for. Do you know what happened to them?”

She already knew, and she felt sick and cold just thinking about it.

“I killed them. They sided with their precious master when he tried to murder me in my sleep. They thought I had killed him, and so they tried to kill me too. You know the rest. You may think you have friends, but they will all let you down when it matters.”

Stung, she pulled up her blanket and flopped down on her pallet with her back to him. “Forget it then. You just seem a little short on friends and perhaps if there was anyone in this galaxy who might qualify, it would be me.”

He said nothing in response. After a few minutes of stewing bitterly to herself, she dared to peek over her shoulder.

But there was no sign of Kylo now in the gloom, just corners full of dust and old Wookiee fur. Rey blew out a sigh and let her head fall back to her thin pillow. He was right of course, it was ridiculous to think the Supreme Leader of the First Order and a rebel could be ‘friends’. Yet she did not know how else to define their strange relationship. He may have been her opponent but he was not quite the enemy she had once regarded him to be, and what did you call the person who understood you better than anyone else alive?

The next morning, Rey watched a new shuttle land on the dock. To her delight, it was Finn who marched down the gangway, hollering and waving to Rey in equal delight. “Haven’t fallen out any of these trees yet, huh!” He caught her in a tight hug that ended with a lot of back slapping.

“You look cheerful!” She grinned at him, realising it had been a while since he’d looked so carefree. 

“No wonder - look who’s back on her feet!” 

Descending the gangway behind him was Rose. Her smile was shier but no less exuberant than Finn’s. “Oh wow, it’s really you,” she said almost breathlessly. “You’re Rey. Finn’s told me so much about you - about all those rocks you lifted on Crait. I really wish I’d seen it for myself!”

“Oh, well,” Rey had no idea what to say in the face of such blatant admiration. “It wasn’t that big a deal-”

“I don’t think any of us would be alive if not for you! You’re a real life jedi! Can I see your lightsaber-?”

“No,” said Rey shortly.

Rose’s smile faltered and even Finn looked at her a little shocked.

“It’s broken,” Rey quickly amended.

“Maybe I could take a look at it for you? I’m good at fixing things,” said Rose.

“Rose is an engineer,” said Finn, somewhat proudly.

Rey’s hand landed on the lumpy pocket of her cowl where the remains of the lightsaber lay hidden. “No, I don’t think-”

“I’m really very good,” Rose insisted.

“Real good,” Finn echoed. “The best.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” said Rose.

“Ok, real good, one of the best but there may exist a better engineer somewhere.” Finn looked at Rose expectantly, silently asking if that was accurate enough.

Rey looked between the two, noticing that neither were looking at her anymore. Some sort of private, exasperated joke was playing out between them that Rey had not been included in. Her hand reached up to fiddle with a lock of hair behind her ear, suddenly feeling like she wasn’t a necessary party to this conversation. “I don’t think it can be fixed, it’s broken,” Rey said awkwardly. “It’s only fit for recycling.”

“But… but a jedi has to have a lightsaber,” Rose whispered, as if Rey had just admitted to losing her vision instead of a weapon. Something about her tone annoyed Rey.

“I’m not a jedi, so I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she replied abruptly, then regretted it immediately when she caught Finn’s eye. “I’m sorry, I’d better go. I’m needed…”

Rey wasn’t needed at all, but for the moment she simply needed to escape. She spent the day wandering the walkways between the trees and contemplating the broken pieces of the lightsaber. Perhaps Rose could have pieced it back together again - even Rey could have done that - but the crystal that powered the blade was cracked and dim. There was no fixing that.

She’d half hoped she might run into Kylo on her travels, but she had only herself for company until she returned for the evening meal. The Resistance had quickly adopted the Wookiee tradition of communal feasts, and Rey followed the scent of roasting meat to the central platform where a spit was well underway. Gathered around it in various huddles were the rebels and their Wookiee hosts. They didn’t always understand each other very well, but everyone understood food and good manners.

Rey spotted Finn straight away, but he was too busy sitting next to Rose and laughing at one of her jokes to notice her arrival. Their shoulders were rubbing. Rose’s hand kept touching his arm - his thigh - so casual, but so intimate. Rey looked away, something burning in her chest. She didn’t know what it was, but seeing her friend should have made her happy… but instead she felt more alone than ever.

Across on the other side of the fire was Chewie. It was the first time he’d returned home since Han had died and with all his family around him he clearly seemed much happier for it.

“Why did he stay away for so long?” Rey asked a female Wookiee who was occupied with grooming sap from her fur.

A life debt, the Wookiee told her, as if it was obvious.

“A life debt?” Rey repeated with uncertainty. 

The Wookiee explained quite slowly and loudly, perhaps thinking all humans were a bit slow and stupid, that when one saved a life or spared a life, that being owed that life to the one who saved them. 

Rey contemplated this carefully. “Someone spared my life recently. He could have killed me, and it would have been a much easier thing for him if he had. But he chose to save me…”

The wookie looked at her significantly. In her lilting growls she exclaimed that Rey herself must owe a life debt to this person.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that - what does that entail exactly?”

As it turned out, a life debt was a truly arduous thing. It required that the debtor stay by the side of their saviour and dedicate their life to them, to protect them and even die for them if necessary.

Rey balked. “I don’t think I’ll let him know about this custom,” she said quietly. “He’s not exactly a good guy.”

Then, the Wookiee explained in a matter of fact way, Rey must arrange for his death. Only death absolved a life debt.

“I feel a lot of people are already working on it,” Rey sighed, and decided refused to feel sorry for someone who had brought it all on himself.

After she had eaten her share of the evening roast and was about to return to her hut to rest, Finn caught her arm. “Hey,” he announced.

“Hello,” Rey said guardedly, wondering if she was in trouble for her awkward welcome of Rose earlier.

“So, Rose needs a place to sleep and most of the other cabins are already full to bursting, so…” he trailed off with suggestively raised brows.

It took Rey a moment to catch up. “You want her to stay with me?” Everything inside her revolted at the idea. Rey had spent the last several years sleeping by herself, always alert to the slightest sound that might be a feckless scavenger coming to take her supplies in the night. It did not make communal sleeping a good idea. The few nights she’d spent on the Falcon sharing her sleeping space with several members of the Resistance had been a waking nightmare. Every snore and sigh had jolted her awake and irritated her beyond reason; the only sleep she had caught had been in the cockpit with the doors sealed. It was why Leia had arranged for her to have her own hut separate from the rest of the Resistance.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she told Finn carefully.

Of course he took it wrong. “What’s the problem here, Rey? Rose is my friend. She saved my life and… and I was hoping my two best girls could at least get along. Rose adores you. She’s besotted.”

Only someone who didn’t know her would adore her! Rey sighed. “Doesn’t she want to stay with you?” Rey asked bluntly.

“I-what? I don’t know what you mean - and besides my cabin’s just full of guys and the women’s side is just full.”

Rey was  _ certain _ this was not true, and that there were other alternatives for Rose, but she could see that Finn thought he had struck upon a clever plan and was unlikely to be swayed. 

“I’m a light sleeper, Finn,” she tried to plead.

“It’s not like Rose is a heavy snorer,” he said, before he seemed to realise what he’d said. “I mean, I only know because I’ve watched her sleep a lot - ok, not in a weird way, I mean in a sick way - no! I  _ mean _ , she was sick, so I was just keeping an eye on her.”

A wry smile found its way across Rey’s lips. 

“Please, Rey!” His warm hands clasped her arms. “It would mean a lot to me.”

He was her friend, after all. Rey nodded woodenly, stepping back out of his overly familiar touch. “Alright, Finn. She can stay with me.”

Rey returned to her cabin, resigned to the fact that it wouldn’t be her private sanctuary for much longer. Away from the noise and cheer of the others, she settled on her pallet and pulled the blanket around her shoulders as she took out one of Luke’s old jedi texts and opened it to the same place she’d left off. The language was quite beyond her, but she found the illustrations transcended the language barrier, appearing to show stances and exercises and diagrams of things that needed further study before they could be fully understood.

She felt her senses shift and expand, as if an ambient sound she had filtered out had just changed pitch and reminded her it was there. She lifted her head to see a black boot standing near her worn out mattress.

“Don’t waste your time with them. They’d serve you better as a doorstop,” said Kylo Ren, staring down at the book in her hand with a faint frown.

“I’m trying to focus, please leave me alone,” Rey said with measured patience.

“My uncle thought these books would have all the answers. He spent years tracking them all down and repairing them. So pointless. He could barely even read them. Most of the time it was me who had to translate them for him.”

Rey looked up at him in surprise. “You can read these?”

“Some of them.”

“But these are dead languages,” she protested.

Kylo just looked at her. “Dead languages are like ancestors. You just have to find the modern descendants and with a decent modded protocol program, you can understand the basics.”

“That’s not that easy,” said Rey.

“I didn’t say it was easy.”

Rey didn’t want to admit she was impressed. She probably knew more languages than most from years spent alongside traders from all quarters, but she doubted she could code a program to revive dead languages. Ben Solo had been a clever boy. If he’d also been at all cunning then she might have been in real trouble on the few occasions they’d clashed in person.

A timid knock on the door had Rey snapping her head around just as Rose carefully poked her head inside.

Kylo followed her gaze. She wasn’t ever sure how much of her own surroundings he could perceive, but now he was staring at Rose in vague outrage. “Is someone there?” he asked.

“Rose!” Rey said brightly, darting a look between the girl and Kylo. Irrationally she expected Rose to notice the man standing right there, but Rose only had eyes for Rey.

“Oh good, you’re awake, I was worried I’d wake you… although, were you talking to someone just now?” Rose peered around the room just as much as Kylo peered at her.

“Tell her to leave at once,” he said, betraying his new status as that of someone who now owned a throne. 

“I’m sorry - I don’t have any spare blankets,” Rey said, jumping to her feet to clear a space on the other side of the room.

“That’s alright, I brought my own,” Rose blushed, smiling a little nervously at her. “It’s so kind of you to let me sleep here. I told Finn not to trouble you, but he said you wouldn’t mind.”

Rey pinned her smile in place with a great deal of effort. “A friend of Finn is a friend of mine,” she said.

“Seems like friends are more trouble than they’re worth,” Kylo said derisively. “This is tedious.”

He turned and walked away. If there was a door to slam he might have done so. Rey had a feeling that most of his irritation was that Rey would no longer pay attention to him. In a moment he was gone and Rey breathed a faint sigh of relief. She returned her attention to where Rose was placing her own standard issue bedding down on the floor. “I promise I’ll try not to be a nuisance,” she told Rey.

But she did in fact snore. Later that night as Rey rolled around on her pallet and tried to find a comfortable position that also allowed her to press her hands over her ears, she felt Kylo return. She rolled over to find him sitting on the edge of her pallet, looking across the room at the snoring engineer. He was so close Rey could swear she felt the warmth rolling off his body.

“This is what you chose?” he asked.

Rey pressed her hands over her face as another snort reverberated through the hut. It was worse than she’d feared. It was like sharing a room with a Luggabeast from Jakku.

“At least I don’t snore.”

Rey met his dark gaze through the dim room and felt heat rise in her face. He spoke like it was a given that had she taken his hand they would have been in a position to sleep together.

And perhaps not simply as bunkmates.

She rolled away and determinedly stared at the wall. Tomorrow she would see about acquiring some noise-cancelling ear plugs - they would be useful for not only tuning out unpleasant snoring but filtering out inappropriate comments from evil darksiders too.

  
  
  
  



	2. The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A profound lack of handrails.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your messages and feedback. :) It means a lot to me. You are all very wonderful people and I am grateful that people ever take time out of their lives to read my silly fics.

Rose’s presence was not quite the burden that Rey had imagined, at least once she’d gotten used to her. It had taken day or two for some of the hero worship to fade and Rose started to speak to her as if she was a person rather than the version of Rey that had been plastered on recruitment posters and Resistance vids. It was suddenly a lot easier to know what to say once that pressure was off and they at least had something in common; Finn.

“You zapped him!” Rey had to cover her mouth to stifle her laughter. “I wish I had seen that.”

“Served him right for trying to run away!” Rose declared.

It was a slow morning, with little else to do but pass the time, and the two girls sat upon the boards outside their hut. Rey’s feet dangled over the edge, but Rpse kept a good foot between herself and the empty air - she didn’t fear heights, she said, but she had some good sense not to provoke them.

“I wish I’d thought of that,” Rey sighed. “You know he tried to run away from me back when we first met Maz. A zapper would have been really handy right then.”

“At least he’s not running away anymore,”

“I’ve noticed,” said Rey, smiling faintly. “I’m glad. Finn has a good heart, but he needed a reason to fight.”

It seemed like Rose had given him that reason, while Rey herself had only ever given him reason to run. “He cares a lot about you,” Rey said.

Rose looked up at her as if an angel itself had granted her benediction. “Do you think so?”

“Has he not said so?”

“No… he mostly talks about you.” Rose gave a little forced laugh. “The way he talks about you, I think I’m kinda in love with you too.”

Rey could have kicked Finn if he’d been sitting on the platform with them right then. “Listen, Finn is an idiot,” Rey said, leaning toward Rose as if she imparting a great secret. “He’s probably talking me up because he wants you to like me. That’s all.”

“I do like you!” said Rose.

“I... like you too,” Rey said, a somewhat shy smile breaking across her face as she realised it was probably true. She wasn’t used to simply saying how she felt, which Rose seemed quite adept at. Nor had she understood that she had been missing companionship of other girls her age until she now had it.

“Normally once you kiss someone, that’s a good test to see if they like you or not,” Rose continued. “But I passed out… so I don’t really know how he reacted.”

“You kissed Finn?” Rey echoed, eyes flitting wide.

“I think. Yes, I’m sure, although he’s never really acknowledged it or anything…” said Rose glumly, kicking her feet and looking down into the dark depths of the forest below.

“Maybe he thinks you don’t remember?”

The two girls fell into a contemplative silence, each in their own little world. Absently, Rey touched the tips of her calloused fingers to her lips, curious about how they might feel against someone else’s. “What is it like to kiss someone?” she asked after a while.

Rose’s eyebrows climbed so high Rey thought they might escape under her fringe. “You’ve never been kissed?” she whispered, evidently shocked.

Not realising this was something so shocking, Rey shook her head in bemusement. “Have you… been kissed a lot?” she wondered.

“I’ve kissed one or two - not a whole lot - it’s not like I’m a super expert on it or anything.” Rose snorted and shrugged. “A kiss feels like… I dunno, I’m not sure there’s anything like it. If you’re just kissing for the sake of kissing, it’s just mushing your face up to someone else’s and hoping he can’t taste the pickles you had for lunch, or exactly how long you should keep it up. But a real kiss… is like your whole body is in on it. You feel it in your hands and your feet, in your stomach and your brain turns off and you’re not  _ thinking _ about it, you’re just  _ experiencing  _ it. You know?”

Rey didn’t know. “What’s the difference?”

“You have to really want someone,” said Rose with certainty. “If you don’t, it’s just two mouths wasting time.”

“Is that what it felt like to kiss Finn? A real kiss?” Rey asked, leaning over to her.

Rose looked down. “I don’t remember too good. I think I was just terrified. He’d just tried to kill himself and I was just so happy he was alive, I didn’t even think, I just…” she shrugged helplessly. “You’re very curious. Is there someone you’d like to try it out on?”

A face flashed into mind, and Rey immediately pushed it aside and pretended she’d drawn a blank. “No… I’m just curious.”

“I mean, Poe’s quite charming don’t you think?” Rose said slyly.

“What?” Rey rolled her eyes. “Poe has no romantic feelings for anything that does not have a cockpit.”

Rose’s burst of laughter was quite infectious, and Rey found herself grinning too.

“Are there  _ any  _ adults in your Resistance?” came a voice from behind her.

Pacing slowly and silently along the boards behind them was Kylo Ren. He hadn’t been there long, but Rey wasn’t sure exactly  _ how _ much he’d overheard.

“Would you like to go for a walk?” Rey asked suddenly, jumping to her feet. Rose seemed a little non-plussed but came to her feet and kept pace as Rey strolled out towards the older walkways. Unfortunately, Kylo followed at a leisurely distance. As far as he was concerned, he was strolling through the corridors of his own ship, but Rey wondered if she might just be able to walk him into a wall if he persisted.

“So do you… do you think Finn likes me?” Rose asked her.

“Of course he does. He told me so,” said Rey, glancing over her shoulder once again.

“He told you?”

“Well, he didn’t really need to. It’s obvious,” Rey admitted. “When you’re around, he’s always looking at you. Remember when he was telling you and Poe about how much Stormtrooper armour used to chafe? Poe said afterwards that he could have been pulling faces and Finn would never know, he was so busy looking at you. And when you’re not around, he’s always talking about you, so...”

“Then why won’t he say anything?”

“Men aren’t always the cleverest creatures,” said Rey, casting a dark look over her shoulder at the man following them.  _ Didn’t he have anything better to do?  _ “Sometimes it takes them a while to get a hint through their thick skulls.”

Rose looked over her shoulder too, perhaps beginning to wonder what it was that Rey kept looking for. “Is someone following us?”

“If they had any decency they wouldn’t. Only intrusive creeps would listen in on a private conversation.”

“Why don’t you just shoot her? That would at least end this tedious conversation,” Kylo Ren suggested.

“Probably the same kind of creeps who think violence and murder are the answers to all life’s minor hindrances!” Rey said loudly.

Rose looked at her, a little worried. “Sometimes you’re a bit strange,” she said slowly.

“Am I?”

The air was growing cooler and thick with the smell of rain. They both agreed to hurry ahead and take shelter in one of the old trees ahead. It had died long ago and had been hollowed out enough to form a kind of tunnel through its trunk. Rey pressed her hand to the wall of the tunnel, examining the thousands of rings in the white wood just as the first fat drops of rain fell outside. At least Kylo appeared to have left them alone for now.

“Are you really from Jakku?” Rose asked her. “You have an Imperial accent.”

“Do I?” Rey blinked. It was not something she had ever really noticed. “I suppose most of the humans I met while I was growing up were Imperial officers. I think I might have had a different accent once, but…”

“Finn said you were abandoned,” Rose said.

_ Not like that’s a sore subject or anything _ , Rey thought. “Yes, well,” and that was all she knew to say to that.

“I was abandoned too,” said Rose. “Me and my sister. After our parents died, we were just too much of a burden to the rest of our family… we got sold.”

Rey glanced over at her. “Enslaved,” she said softly.

“We were sent to live in a huge estate. Hundreds of rooms. Chandeliers made out of Lutetium. They had carpets woven from Karlpin silk. But we couldn’t touch any of it. We worked in the kitchens, just a few feet away from where they prepared so much food, you could feed half the Resistance on what that family ate in one day. But all we were given were the expired rations, and that was only if they felt we’d been obedient enough to deserve feeding at all.”

Rey gave a humourless huff. “Sounds familiar.”

“That’s Imperials for you. Even if they forgot to feed us sometimes, it was usually better than being noticed. Paige was older. She got… she  got noticed.” Rose shook her head as if shaking loose a bad memory. “We knew we had to get out after that.”

Rey regarded her for a while. “How old were you when you got away?”

“Ten. Paige was thirteen.”

“Your sister was a brave girl,” Rey told her. It had taken Rey much longer to figure out she was a slave.

“She was,” agreed Rose.

Rose was getting quite upset. Her normally cheerful eyes were filling with tears, and her hand reached up to compulsively clutch a piece of jewellery lying on her breastbone. She turned away. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s ok, it wasn’t that long ago,” Rey said, gathering her elbows gently the way Finn might. Rose was much shorter, and Rey had to bend her head to catch her eye. “You’re allowed to grieve. You’ve been awfully brave about it as far as I’m concerned.”

This might have been the right or wrong thing to say, since it only seemed to make Rose’s whole face crumble with emotion. Rey waited for her to master the sobs that threatened and stroked her arms. She dare not say anything else in case that only made things worse.

“I should go back,” said Rose.

“Are you sure? I’ll walk back with you-”

“No, thank you, I need to be alone I think.”

Rose walked out into the rain without seeming to notice that she was immediately drenched and faded into the hazy downpour. Rey wondered if she should have given her a hug. Had that been the moment for a hug? She sighed and leaned back against the tunnel wall, wishing she was better at giving comfort.

Her eyes immediately found Kylo, standing near the other end of the tunnel. He looked as if he was watching the rain, but Rey knew he couldn’t see it. Perhaps he was standing at a viewport wherever he was.

“How long have you been there?” she asked.

“Long enough.”

Rey glowered at his back. She did not imagine Rose would have wanted someone like Kylo listening on such a private conversation. “You could end this war right now if you wanted,” she said. “Then no one like Rose needs to lose anyone else.”

“Do you think so?” he asked, in that same incredulous, almost amused tone he’s used before. “Do you think any one person could stop a war industry?”

Rey refused to be chastised. “You’re the leader.”

“Leaders are replaceable. You know that.”

“So powerless,” she mused, intending to provoke him.

“You’re naive. That’s a common problem in the jedi.”

“I’m not a jedi. I don’t even have a lightsaber anymore thanks to you.” Rey pushed away from the tunnel wall moodily and walked towards the rain. 

“You can build a new one.”

“I don’t know how.”

“I can show you how.”

Rey resisted the temptation to roll her eyes, sensing another wheedling invitation. “I don’t need you,” she said coldly. “I will never need you, Ben.”

The rain had begun to slack off so Rey took the opportunity to head out. She wanted some solitude herself, and headed out away from the village where the Resistance was based and toward the abandoned platforms where few dared to go.

It didn’t really occur to her the full reasons why in fact few Wookiee’s went to the old villages anymore. She had assumed it was something to do with walkways falling into disrepair and rotten boards that might give way under foot, but Rey had spent a lifetime navigating dangerous wrecks of all kinds and she knew which paths to take and which to avoid.

She did not expect to hear the snap of a wire and a faint trilling beep as she mounted a step leading around a wizened old tree trunk. She had half a second to hear the heightening pitch and frequency of the beeps before she heard a terrible bang and felt herself lifted clean off her feet by a wave of heat and pressure. Her hip and arm struck the edge of a wooden board, sending a jolt of terrible pain shooting through her very bones, and then there was weightless. The world was a tumbling blur and she was falling.

It was a long way to the ground in the forests of Kashyyyk, just enough time for Rey to realise what was happening and wonder at her own stupidity. The dark shadows of the ground were flying up to meet her - so fast, too soon - it wasn’t fair-!

Rey closed her eyes and futilely extended her arms over her head, as if she might keep the ground at bay with just her own hands.

Rey never remembered hitting the ground.

 

* * *

 

On Jakku, when the Imperial ships had first fallen, the pickings had been so rich that there had been no need to fight over the scraps. There had been teams that worked together, prying open panels and taking turns in loading the carts to take the components back to the hub to be traded for credits.

And while most scavengers had picked out the precious metals and some had collected the bodily remains and personal trinkets, and others had ripped out the sophisticated flight equipment, Unkar Plutt had gathered the rations. He was not a stupid man. He had run operations like this before. He knew that soon the carcasses of the great ships would be picked of the most valuable drek and then the traders with their credits would depart, and what would be left? 

After a few years, all scavengers worked for Plutt. Those that could leave had long gone, and though most of the good salvage had gone too, there would always be some for those brave or foolish enough to dig deep enough for it. Some scavengers, so desperate for food, had once tried to dismantle the core of an old star destroyer. The resulting explosion had lit the night sky as clearly as daylight and left a crater two miles wide. Rey had thanked the heavens that she had not been on the night shift at the time.

She had been part of Emeki Angurra’s gang. Emeki was not the kindest individual, but her gang was large and mostly composed of children. If you wanted a semblance of safety, Emeki’s gang was where you needed to be. But Emeki’s demands were costly. She regularly sent her children into the crawl spaces where few others could fit, and some never returned, fried by live wires or caught in a void collapse. And sometimes they fell.

It had happened to Rey once. Emeki had wanted a copper frequency transposer, and her blueprints for a typical destroyer had told her it would be in the control tower of the hangar. But with the ship rolled on its side and buried deep in the dunes, the only way into the hangar was through narrow maintenance shafts, after which someone would need to be lowered by a rope to reach the tower below.

Rey was the smallest and a strong climber, so Emeki decided she would be the one to be lowered on a rope. An older boy who was still small enough to fit through the pipes but strong enough to hold her weight on the rope would go with her.

But the boy had never cared for Rey or the way Unkar Plutt favoured her. After Rey had found the component he had winched her back up and held out his hand. “Give me the transposer.”

Rey had given it to him without a second thought. The next thing she knew, the boy had released the rope and Rey had plummeted nearly forty feet to what should have been certain death. 

Somehow she had gotten lucky. The sloping roof of the hangar had caught her - or something else had caught her - and she’d slid the rest of the way down into the remains of an old TIE fighter. If she had broken even one bone she may have certainly died down in that wreck. Bruised and bemused, she had shouted and called and begged for help. When she finally realised no one was coming to save her, that she had been left for dead, she undertook the treacherous climb to reach the maintenance shaft by herself.

Emeki had been a little surprised to see her alive after hearing how she had fallen, but the only thing about the incident that displeased the gang leader was that Rey had fallen right into the wreck of a TIE fighter and hadn’t thought to bring back the power couplings.

 

* * *

 

 

Rey came to slowly, pieces of awareness returning to her like a puzzle being fitted together. The first thing she felt was a pain drawing a jagged line through her back and to her skull. Why did everything hurt? Her cheek was wet. Had she been caught in the rain?

Someone was saying her name. They had been saying it for some time and she had heard them, but only now did she understand who and what ‘Rey’ was. The ghosting touch of fingers on her shoulder. So gentle, almost tender.

And then a vicious, almost hysterical demand. “Wake up!”

Rey’s eyes slid open on command, though she didn’t see much at first. Was it the middle of the night? 

The more she woke, the more intense the pain became until she gave a weak moan of agony. 

“Rey? What happened? You vanished and now…”

Through the gloom she peered up at Kylo Ren’s pale, anxious face. He looked angry when he was scared, she thought. He must have been very scared right then because he looked terrifying. She tried to assemble her thoughts and piece together how it was she had come to be lying here in such pain.

It was not night, she realised. Perhaps she had only been unconscious for a few seconds. Looking up she could see a hint of daylight far above, though not much of it penetrated down here among the damp leaf mulch.

“I was just walking,” she gasped. “There was a bang… did I step on something? A mine? I fell…”

“Can you get up?”

Rey tried to bend her knee and stopped when a pained squeak escaped her lips. “I think I’ve broken something. Maybe a lot of things.” She tried to stamp down on the rising panic. Broken bones meant death on Jakku. A broken scavenger was no good to anybody, they were just a dead weight. 

_ I’m not on Jakku anymore, _ she told herself, clenching her eyes shut. 

“Where are your people?” Kylo demanded.

“I… I don’t know. I walked so far, too far for them to hear that bang,” she said. She had taken to spending so much time alone these days that it could be a long time before anyone realised she was missing, and even then, would anyone think to look for her down here?

“Your head is bleeding.”

“It really hurts,” she admitted. What if she’d cracked her skull too?

“Tell me where you are. You need help right now.”

Even in her pained daze, Rey was not stupid enough to go along with this. “I will die before I give away the Resistance’s location to the enemy,” she whispered.

“Then you  _ will _ die,” he sounded exasperated.

Rey’s body hurt too much to argue. She lay her head down and tried to concentrate on staying calm.

“Don’t sleep,” Kylo’s voice commanded her.

Something was grunting in the trees to her left. Rey stiffened, remembering all the stories the Wookiee’s told about the hungry creatures that dwelled in the darkness. When Wookiee’s came down here to hunt, they only ever came in packs. To come alone was to invite certain death.

“Ben, I think there’s something here with me,” she whispered. “I think it will probably eat me.”

“Don’t fool around - tell me where you are,  _ right now _ .”

Rey wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell him very dearly, but at that moment she saw movement in the corner of her eye and knew that if she said anything more, it would see her. She didn’t even dare fully turn her head to look. She just caught the impression of an incredibly bulk, pincers and cloven feet. It snuffled and pawed at the mulch, tracking down a scent that would surely lead it straight to her.

_ “Rey!” _

Furiously, Kylo rose to his feet.

Rey’s gaze jerked back to Kylo. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered, trembling. 

He came straight back down on his knees before her. “Then let me help you.” His large hands reached out and held her face, and she felt the shock of his warm gloves against her cold cheeks. It was not a tender touch. It was almost threatening, like he half wished to shake her. “Tell me where you are before you bleed to death.”

She couldn’t, she wouldn’t. Not to save her own skin at the cost of everyone else. Even if she told him, she was minutes away from death. He would never get to Kashyyyk in time.

The enormous creature was getting closer. She could hear its eager grunts as it caught her scent and lifted its great snout to taste the air. Its eyes were tiny. It couldn’t see her but it certainly knew she was there now.

It made a sudden movement and Rey braced, ready to be gobbled up. Then the giant beast gave a shriek that turned her blood cold and it galloped away through the trees. Rey was still trying to process what had happened when she heard the hum of engines overhead and understood what had spooked it.

“Thank god,” she whispered, as a shuttle broke through the lowest level of the canopy and sank slowly towards her.

“Are you safe?” Kylo asked her.

Rey was about to nod, but the shuttle was getting closer and now Rey was not so sure. It was not one she recognised - certainly not one she had ever seen the Resistance use. After the craft had landed and the engines hissed into dormancy, it was almost a full minute before the gangway dropped and the doors cracked open.

Rey was not at all reassured to see her saviours were two squat creatures wielding breathing masks and electrode prods. One was carrying cuffs.

“That’s not a Wookiee!” barked one in one of the dialects of the outer rim. Rey had heard it on Jakku enough times, usually spoken by the flesh traders who had only one business.

“Slavers,” she said. 

Now she understood. Even after all these years, even after the supposed liberation of Kashyyyk from the Empire, Wookiee’s were still the most desirable slaves. She must have stumbled upon a trap that once triggered would send a signal to the slavers who had laid it.

“It’s a human. Female? It will do. They sell just as easily.”

The two short creatures moved toward her.

“If you lay a hand on me, you will both regret it!” Rey said, more fiercely than she felt.

The two creatures raised their prods warily. Even if they didn’t know what she was, she was still much bigger than either of them. Rey tried to lift her hand. If she could brush these creeps aside and steal the shuttle for herself, there was still a chance for her.

But Rey could not even bend her wrist without groaning in pain. 

She sank forward, exhausted by the effort.

“Put the cuffs on - put them on!” one creature shouted to the other. Magnetic locks clamped over her arms - designed for much larger Wookiee wrists, but effective all the same. Rey screamed in pain as she was wrenched forward and dragged along the ground. “Ben!” she cried out, though she could not see through the blur of pained tears to see if he was still there. “Ben!”

“She’s all mangled!” complained one of the slavers.

“That’s not our problem. We can always sell her as parts. The buyers on Tatooine don’t care.”

“Tatooine, absolutely not!” Rey shouted. She knew what the darker sides of Tatooine did with slaves to meet the growing demand of the black market trade for blood and organs.

Dumped unceremoniously on the filthy floor, Rey held herself rigid and fought for breath. She would need to add multiple broken ribs to her list of suspected injuries. With every bang and shout of the slavers as they locked up their shuttle and powered up the engines, Rey felt like her head was fit to split open and spill her brains across the floor. What a sight that would be. She looked around dizzily for Kylo, but he had abandoned her after all.

The Resistance had no formal base on this world. There had been no time or resources to put up a monitoring net in the upper atmosphere that would detect spacecraft. Unless anyone spotted the shuttle with their own two eyes, no one would know what had happened to her.

She felt a lurch as the shuttle entered hyperspace. The slavers continued to argue, apparently still incensed that their trap had not netted them a more valuable Wookiee. Rey looked around the cluttered space of the shuttle, looking for something she could use. A wrench had been left on a workbench nearby. If she could just reach it-

A burning pain snaked up her spine and stars burst in her vision. Rey cried out and felt every muscle in her body contract painfully.

“Don’t even think about it,” said the slaver standing over her, waving his electrode prod menacingly. “I’ll zap you again if you move!”

“You’ve made the biggest mistakes of your lives,” Rey ground out.

“Clearly!” said the one piloting the shuttle. “Just throw her out the airlock already!”

“I’m telling you, she’s worth something!” The one with the prod returned to the argument. “Attractive human females are worth more than Wookiees.”

“Is she attractive?”

“She is very symmetrical, that seems to be popular.”

“Her hair is brown, like dirt. I thought yellow ones were better?”

“We can make it yellow. We just need some peroxide. I think if we feed it to her...”

“She looks hideous to me, but then all humans look the same. What if you’re wrong? We can’t afford to waste more time.”

Rey was too fatigued to keep up with their argument or fight the nausea and black spots that danced in her vision. She just wanted to sleep. It hurt less when she slipped closer to the edge of unconsciousness. Her thoughts became more jumbled and confused and her arms and legs felt so cold.

“Where’s Ben?” she asked.

“Be quiet!” snarled one of the slavers.

“They’re taking me... to Tatooine, Ben,” she tried to look around. “Ben?”

“Does she have a communicator?”

“No, she’s just addled. Give her a stim before she bleeds out.”

It could have been hours or minutes later when Rey felt the telltale drop in her stomach as the ship left hyperspace. 

“What’s with all the Imperial cruisers?” chirped one of the slavers.

“First Order, not Imperial,” said the other.

“Same thing. Is that… is that a dreadnought?”

Rey listened to the unhappy silence between the two creatures before one said, “I’ve never seen one that big.”

“Go around them.”

“How do I go around a fleet?”

“Under - go under!”

Something in the console began to beep. “Oh  _ krong,  _ they’re hailing us.”

“Answer them - and act naturally!”

A new voice came over the console, crisp and dispassionate. Rey abstractly thought about how Rose said this was how she sounded. “Slaver vessel, you are carrying a member a rebel on your craft. Relinquish control to us at once and prepare to be boarded.”

The slavers were stunned. “A rebel?” hissed one. “Did you know this?”

“The First Order pays good money for rebel bodies, especially ones that are alive,” said the other, glancing back at Rey with a greedy huff in his voice. “Give me the speaker -  _ ahem _ First Order vessel, we captured this woman ourselves and brought her here for the bounty. Who do we speak to regarding this bounty?”

After a moment the speaker responded. “We are sending the coordinates to a hangar bay. Please dock at once. Someone will meet with you there to discuss your compensation.”

The slavers cut the feed, chuckling with glee. Rey shook her head at them. “You should turn back now…” she said. “They’ll kill you.”

The slaver with the prod turned back to her haughtily. “We have dealt with the Order before. They always keep their word. This is even better than selling you on Tatooine - Rebels are worth ten times as much as Wookiee slaves and the First Order is always good for the credits.”

Rey closed her eyes. “You’re wrong.”

“Shut up and stop looking so droopy - they’ll want  you live and kicking for what they have in store for you!” They laughed again and couldn’t steer the ship fast enough to dock with the dreadnought hanging at the centre of the fleet. Rey barely glimpsed it through the viewport, but she saw it still held the deep scars of its fight with the Resistance a few weeks ago. Scarred just like its new master.

The slavers were practically hopping with excitement when they landed their ship clumsily in the hangar and released the gangway. The light outside was blinding after the the dim enclosure of the old shuttle. Rey’s eyes hurt as she turned her head towards the light and tried to focus on the shapes outside. There was a lot of movement, the hangar was full of it. But there was a dark shape close to the end of the gangway that she knew even if she couldn’t make out his features.

Of course he’d come down personally.

“Here we are!” said the slaver, switching to laboured Common tongue. “One Rebel for you! Young and beautiful!”

Kylo Ren ascended the ramp slowly. “Remove her restraints.”

“Of course, of course.” One of the slavers hastily freed the shackles from around Rey’s wrists, not seeming to mind too much if he jostled a broken bone or two.

“You should be richly rewarded,” said Kylo softly, stooping to look closer at Rey’s bruised face. A gloved finger lightly moved aside a strand of hair from her brow that was sticky with blood. “This is the woman who killed Supreme Leader Snoke. She’s quite possibly the most dangerous woman in the galaxy, and easily the most wanted.”

The slavers stood stunned, then quickly recovered themselves. “Yes, yes, it was very difficult capturing her. Very costly - but we knew it was the right thing to do, for law and order to prevail in this galaxy!”

Kylo reached an arm behind Rey’s knees and another around her back. He lifted her with ease but the movement still made every part of her body scream in pain, but she was far past the point of being able to groan and cry. Her head rolled limply against his chest. Though her senses were overwhelmed with a mixture of pain and numbness, she still caught the scent of his clothes mingling with the warmth of his skin.

He carried her down the gangway with the two despicable creatures hurrying after him. “Our payment?” one barked a little today forcefully.

“Yes,” said Kylo, without turning back. He glanced at his cohort of stormtroopers. “Crush their ship to dust in the compactor with them inside it. I think that will suffice.”

Rey did not recall much of the journey to the medical bay. She didn’t open her eyes again until she felt herself being lowered onto a black medical panel. Past the whirring metal arms of needles that were beginning to activate around her, she saw Kylo at her side.

“You are safe now,” he said simply, quietly.

He might have believed that, but Rey didn’t buy it for even a second.


	3. The Guest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey meets the Supreme Leader for the first time.

A perfectly rational thought had come to him as he’d looked down at the broken body crumpled before his throne.

_ I’m finally free of her _ .

The girl whose slight form had eluded him for so long, struck down in an instant in some unknown corner of the galaxy. His final obstacle, his only worthy enemy... finally overcome, and he hadn’t even needed to lift a finger.

And yet his stomach twisted at the intensity of his reaction and his grip tightened so hard on the throne that he could feel the glass controls splintering beneath his gloved fingertips. Why did she continue to cause such strong and unnatural feelings in him? Why couldn’t he be  _ glad  _ to see her broken and beaten? Why did the sight of death and violence leave him apathetic until it was the sight of blood on  _ her _ brow. 

It was a weakness, but his last weakness, and one he should have excised long ago before it had taken root. That’s what Snoke had told him.  _ The imperfect threads must be cut, _ his master had whispered to him.  _ They are what hold you back, tying you to mediocrity when supremacy is almost within your grasp. _

His attachment to the girl had been a constant source of needling, but the warnings that she would bring about his downfall had proven untrue so far. Snoke was the one who had paid the price. Kylo’s position had only improved.

He knew at once that she could not be completely dead - he still felt the presence of her mind against his own like something that wrapped around him; something that  breathed through him. It seemed to make perfect sense then to scramble an entire fleet to come to the aid of one young woman. Hux could balk and splutter as he usually did whenever Kylo issued an order, but he was not quite brave enough to disobey, even though he loudly carped on about the incomplete structural repairs to the Supremacy.

He couldn't deny the the excitement that filled him when finally saw her, whole and real before him. Her injuries did not concern him. There did not exist any malady that the medical facilities on this ship could not cure. He had been waiting for this moment. He’d been  _ dreaming _ of it. Although whether he wanted to stroke her cheek or wrap his hands around her throat in his dreams could vary night to night. At this moment he merely scooped her up and felt what he thought of as a familiar weight settle against his chest. He was not even particularly angry with the slavers, stupid, uninspired creatures that they were, for they had unwittingly delivered her to him. He’d ordered their deaths only as an afterthought as he marvelled at his own fortune and how light and small she felt in his arms for someone so powerful.

Through the observatory window of the medical bay, Kylo watched the progression of her treatments. The metal pneumatic arms flicked back and forth with infinitesimal precision, sometimes working with painstaking leisure at her hip. The bones there seemed to have sustained the most damage and putting it all back together would take time.

When he saw a medical droid about to casually dispose of her bloody and torn clothing down an incineraion chute, he rapped sharply on the glass.

“Repair those,” he snapped out the command and saw the droid hesitate as it processed its new orders, before exiting with the grey bundle of fabrics.

When Hux arrived, Kylo felt his shoulders tense automatically. The disagreeable general was wearing an expression like he’d pushed his face in a bowl of sour milk shortly before entering.

“That woman should be placed in the brig before she’s revived,” he said, glowering through the window at Rey.

“She is a guest,” murmured Kylo softly without taking his eyes off her still, pale face.

“She  _ murdered _ Supreme Leader Snoke,” hissed Hux, turning to focus that blistering pale glare on Kylo entirely. “She is a dangerous enemy - she’s a  _ Rebel _ . We need to make an example of her-”

“She’s an opportunity. You want to see the last of the Resistance wiped out,” Kylo lifted his chin. “Your answer is in there.”

Hux regarded him silently, but Kylo heard much of what went unsaid. “Whatever plot you think you’ve conceived, I suggest - humbly - that we return to our efforts in Jedha at once. If the Project faces any more delays-”

“The fleet remains here until I say so.”

The waves of displeasure and anger were so thick that one hardly needed to read minds to understand Hux’s thoughts. Kylo turned to him slowly. “Your  _ doubt _ , General… is noted. And as long as you remember who gives the orders on this ship, your doubts mean nothing to me.”

He moved past the rigid general, gesturing abruptly to the two officers posted by the door who fell into step behind him at once. He had work to do.

 

* * *

 

 

The next time Rey awoke, most of her pain had subsided. Her bones had been seared back together and though she still felt tender, there seemed no danger of lasting damage. She flexed her fingers to test her range of motion and was relieved that the action sent no pain shooting up her arms. Only superficial cuts and bruises remained, along with one terrific lump on the back of her head. The concussion appeared to have abated.

Rey looked about the spartan, glossy medical bay where she’d been left very much alone. It was going to be a task in itself to reconcile that yesterday she had pretty much fallen out of a tree and in doing so had landed herself on the flagship of the First Order.

Sitting up carefully, Rey brushed aside the surgical arms that had long fallen still. Her clothing had been taken away at some point, replaced with modesty bands that weren’t exactly the height of modesty. A little exploration of the ward brought her to a panel that slid away when she touched it to reveal a small rail where several grey silk gowns hung. They were shapeless and unisex, but it was better than nothing. Rey pulled one of the smaller ones over her head and limped toward the door.

She expected it to be locked, dangerous Rebel that she was, so she almost jumped back in surprise when the door hissed open to reveal the corridor beyond. A stormtrooper that had been fiddling with the cuff of his uniform suddenly snapped to attention. “You are to follow me.”

“Am I?” asked Rey, flummoxed.

“The Supreme Leader requested your presence in the throne room once you awakened.”

“Throne room…” Rey repeated, although the more interesting word might have been ‘requested’. She momentarily toyed with the idea of refusing. She could fool the stormtrooper and tell him to go sweep a corridor somewhere. Perhaps because of they were drilled into such mindless obedience, they were rather easy to fool with what Luke had called a mind trick. 

That would perhaps be the most sensible thing to do. But… she knew she could not leave this place without seeing Kylo Ren.

Without seeing Ben.

With a little trepidation she followed the stormtrooper, feeling odd to be walking through corridors filled with uniformed members of the First Order without shackles or in subterfuge.

The elevator trip was a familiar one, although halfway up the stormtrooper marched her out and into another elevator, brusquely explaining that repairs were still being carried out and some transport systems were not fully functional yet.

“Still licking your wounds after your fight with the Rebels,” she remarked.

“Quiet,” snapped the trooper.

Rey had nothing more to say to him either way. She waited in silence for the doors to hiss open and stepped out without prompting. 

The throne room had not yet fully recovered its former glory. Half the lights were broken and the red haze she remembered didn’t seem quite as even and unearthly anymore. Broken pillars still littered the edge of the room, exposed panels and bare cables snaked across a floor still scarred with the marks of a lightsaber battle. It was incomplete; a work in progress.

She had escaped this room in the aftermath of the collision with the Raddus. She had seen Kylo lying on the floor. He’d been thrown hard by the impact and she had hesitated over his body, wondering if she dared leave him in that state. Ultimately she had chosen to run, knowing she might never get free if she waited until he roused.

Now she was back. The moment she appeared, he rose to his feet with a rush. The opulence of a throne did not suit him. There was still a restless energy in him that almost certainly didn’t mesh well with lounging around in a hard chair. He stood stiffly at the foot of the dais, his hands curled into fists against his sides. Rey approached slowly, as one would toward any dangerous creature that was only half-tamed.

“Rey…”

Her name on his lips was almost startling, and she thought she had never heard it spoken like that. Like it was a greeting, a welcome and an acknowledgement all that once. She stopped in the middle of the floor, a little afraid to continue. Worried that she liked the way he said her name more than she should.

“You look better,” he said.

Better was relative. Rey still felt flakes of dried blood gunging up her hair and she was sure half her face was one great bruise. “My ego took the harder blow.”

“Accidents happen to the best of us, I suppose,” said Kylo.

“I suppose,” she echoed, although she wouldn’t have said the slavers intended it to be an accident. But for a force-user of his caliber, he probably expected better from her. “Am I your prisoner now?”

“You’re a guest,” he said shortly.

He’d said that before, and maybe this time she wasn’t strapped to a chair, but she knew the balance of power here was not in her favour. Weakened, half dressed and without a lightsaber, she was not feeling as confident as she had the last time she’d stepped foot in this room, so convinced of her own ability to bring a hero out in Kylo Ren.

A flash of awareness seemed to tingle in her sense. Rey breathed in deeply, feeling a little like she did whenever she had connected to Kylo’s mind before. It was strange to look up and see him and know that he was really there. It was not unlike looking at two versions of him transposed over each other. 

Judging from his curious look, he was thinking along similar lines. 

“I need transport,” she said after a moment. “I only need to be taken as far as Tatooine. I can find my own way from there.”

Kylo’s’ face darkened a fraction. “I brought an entire fleet to this backwater sector to save you.”

“And what do you want me to say?” she blurted, feeling a chill rise up her arms. “I appreciate what you did, though I think I would have found my own way out of that situation eventually.”

“Not with injuries like those,” he said simply, gesturing to her. “Your head was cracked, two of your ribs had pierced your liver and your hip was shattered. That you ever regained consciousness was incredible.”

Chagrined, Rey looked away to examine a melted patch on the tile she stood upon. Had she made that mark or had Kylo?

Kylo circled her slowly. “It’s a long way down to the ground on Kashyyyk, isn’t it?”

Rey’s eyes snapped back to him. Her mouth opened, but Kylo beat her to it.

“I had the flight data pulled from the slaver’s ship before we crushed it,” he said without malice. “So now we know where the Resistance is hiding its last dregs.”

Rage boiled so hard and fast through Rey’s body that she trembled. “That was all you wanted all along! You heartless creature - for a moment there I thought maybe you were capable of at least one act of kindness but I see you’re incapable of a  good deed without ulterior motive!”

Kylo’s gaze was unblinking. “You called out to me. You lay dying and the only word on your lips was  _ my _ name. If you did not want me-”

_ “I did not want you, _ ” Rey could not keep from shaking. Her teeth clenched and hands spasmed. “I did not want  _ this.” _

“I know how little you think of me. But if you think I’m after the Resistance, you’ve over-estimated your worth.”

He stepped closer to her, forcing her to lift her chin to maintain eye contact. He was a large man with a habit of holding himself compressed, trying to take up less room than he should, like a boy who had grown too quickly. When he straightened to his full height, it was hard not to take an instinctive step back.

“The Resistance are like flies to me now,” he said with a quiet note of threat in his tone. “Why should I waste my time hunting flies when there are much bigger things to accomplish?”

“The Resistance brought down an empire before, that’s why. And we’ll do it again if we have to,” Rey told him.

“We? You’re no Rebel, not really. And that was the past,” he turned his head away with a sigh. “Luke Skywalker is gone. The hope of resistance died with him.”

“You’re wrong.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said apathetically, as if they were merely disagreeing over the weather, “I’m not. You think you can replace him, but you’re not Luke Skywalker. You’ll never be the legend he was. Even he wasn’t the legend he was. Luke Skywalker’s legacy is as light and pure as driven snow and you? Do you know what they say about you?”

“No…” she said with dread.

The corner of his mouth lifted in a faint sneer. “Nothing. No one says anything about you, most haven't heard of you yet.” His head tilted to one side. “And if they knew you like I did, if they knew how you weave between the dark side and the light like a child playing with something it doesn’t understand, they’d never glorify you. They’d never trust you. Like they never trusted me.”

Kylo Ren rarely lied. He didn’t need to when the truth could be so sweetly painful, but she knew him too and knew how he wielded truth as a weapon, to bend it just enough to bring others into line. “And I suppose the sensible thing would be to join you?” she asked caustically.

“You’re still too naive, I see that now.” Kylo’s gaze wandered over her face as he spoke. Did he realise he did that? As if she wouldn’t notice? “I’m proposing a truce.”

“A what?” Rey’s brows knit together. “Since when does the First Order commit to a truce?”

“New leadership, new rules. I’ll leave Kashyyyk alone, and you’ll have free passage to come and go from this ship as you please for as long as you want it. You will always be an honoured guest of the First Order.”

“And what do I have to promise in return?” she asked, sensing a trap.

He was close. So close she could hear him inhale slowly and see the herringbone pattern of coarse threads upon the cape that draped over his arm. For a moment she thought she knew what he was going to ask for, and though she would certainly slap him for it and tell him to get to hell, something inside her tightened at the thought.

“Nothing,” he said, and moved away from her. He climbed the dais toward the throne and slid his fingers over a panel on the armrest. “Summon Hux. And arrange a transport to Tatooine.”

Rey watched him incredulously. “I don’t believe that. You must want something,” she said.

Such generosity had to have a price. His eyes had a heat to them she didn’t quite understand when he glanced down at her again.

“You know what I want,” he said. “And you’ll give it to me in time. Until then…”

The elevator behind Rey hissed open and she turned to see a red-headed man with a deeply sour face enter the chamber. He locked eyes with Rey and even deeper lines of disgust appeared in his face. 

He didn’t even look at Kylo as he addressed him. “What is it?”

Rey blinked in shock and looked at Kylo, expecting a typically violent response to such disrespect. But Kylo didn’t appear to notice. He took his seat on the throne. “This woman is to be escorted to Tatooine with enough credits to book her own passage from there.”

“ _ This woman, _ ” enunciated the angry man, “is Rebel Scum and I will escort her to the brig. The murder of our Leader must be answered for!”

Rey was perfectly aware that the blame for Snoke’s death had been shifted to herself. It was the lie upon which Kylo’s power now rested and though she had pleaded with Leia to alert their allies to the truth, Leia had refused. The idea that Rey had killed Snoke was a precious spark of hope to the Resistance than she did not want to see snuffed out.

Right now, Rey could have upset all that. She only had to look at this red-haired man to see the hatred and contempt he had for Kylo and the bars on his uniform made him second only to the Supreme Leader himself. If Rey told the truth now, she could make things very difficult for Kylo Ren indeed.

Kylo knew this. She saw the flinty look he shot her when she raised her eyebrows at him; half a demand, half a plea for silence. She stared at him just long enough to let him know she could have sunk him in a moment, then let the moment pass.

“This woman…” repeated Kylo slowly, “Is a particular guest. General Hux, you will escort her to her transport-”

“Your actions are bordering on treasonous!” protested Hux.

He wasn’t exactly wrong, but Rey felt the swell of ugly power in the room and immediately stepped away from the General as Kylo swung to his feet and stalked toward him. “ _ You - never - learn! _ ” His outstretched hand twisted and Hux crashed to the ground as if he’d been stepped on. Kylo stood over him, the hum of his power vibrating through the air as the General struggled for breath. “If you continue to push me I will  _ break _ you! Snoke is not here to protect you anymore!”

Hux was red with anger and shortness of breath. “My father-”

“Is the only reason you still live. If you question me again, I will send you to him in a thousand different boxes.”

Snoke may have been dead but his influence was still alive and strong over Kylo. Rey grimaced as the prone man choked and his body seemed to creak under the pressure. She grabbed Kylo’s elbow. “Ben. You’ve made your point.”

The very instant she touched him, he backed off, whirling away from her as if her hand burned. She couldn’t read his expression as the General affected some laboured coughing and rose to his feet.

“I will take her as you say, Supreme Leader,” Hux said stiffly and marched back toward the elevator.

Rey lingered a moment, wondering if she should say something else. Thanks? Good bye? Kylo’s gaze bore into hers for a long moment, before he turned and walked slowly back to a chair he still didn’t quite fit. An unfinished work. Just like his throne room.

Rey turned too and followed Hux into the elevator. The man had turned almost purple now though she suspected that was apoplectic rage more than anything. She had never met anyone who had such a disagreeable look of denied entitlement. His pale eyes crept toward her and his natural sneer only deepened.

“I can only imagine what you have given our dear leader in exchange for such a bargain,” he said, and Rey had a good idea of what kind of filth he was imagining - it was probably not too far from what she herself had imagined earlier. “Don’t get comfortable. You’ll both be locked in the brig together soon enough.”

General Hux could certainly talk a brave game, but when Rey lifted her hand, he couldn’t help but flinch. Rey did nothing more than tuck a grimy lock of hair behind her ear, regarding him with consternation.

“If it’s mutiny you’re after, you’d probably have more success if you didn’t advertise it,” she told him.

“Mutiny is an abhorrent concept. When the generals assemble and cast their vote, we shall see who will truly be the next Supreme Leader.”

Although Hux seemed confident about such a vote, Rey was quite certain that if Kylo wished to hold on to power, no kind of ‘vote’ would stop him. A man who could easily crush objectors and make people say exactly what he wanted them to say would always overrule a few ranking officers.

Then again, she thought, it would be better for everyone including Kylo if he stepped down. She just didn’t see that happening in his current mindset. Even in his calmest moments, she sensed the upheaval inside him. Han Solo’s death still tormented him, Luke’s demise infuriated him, and Rey’s refusal to bend had enraged him. He felt powerless, and so absolute power was all he grabbed for now.

But even when he sat in that throne, he felt like his world was still careening out of control. Rey could only dread what kind of plans he might have that he thought would absolve his feelings of helplessness. No doubt they would be as destructive and counter-productive as all his other decisions thus far.

Hux marched her to a First Order shuttle waiting for her in the hangar and was glad that  this was as far as he planned to escort her. Her clothes were returned to her, along with a pad loaded with just enough credits to book passage off world. Rey checked all of it quite carefully for chips and tracking devices, still not daring to believe she was being released so easily. 

Even as she stood on the port docks in the shimmering heat and watched the Order’s shuttle depart, she racked her brains for the trap that must have been laid.

She handed the credits over to the first urchin she saw and headed her own way into the city, taking several laps through quieter districts before she finally accepted that she was not being followed. Only then did she find the nearest exchange and sent a transmission through to one of the Resistance’s covert profiles.

She gave her callsign and password to the operative who almost immediately placed her on hold. After a few minutes, Leia herself appeared on the screen, her face a picture of relief. “What happened to you, we’ve been combing the damn planet trying to find you!”

“It’s a long story,” said Rey. “I’m on Tatooine.”

“The hell…” muttered Leia, and her face loomed large as she must have leaned in close to peer at Rey’s image on her own display. “Is that blood on your face?”

“Probably. I can explain later, but right now you need to get the Resistance away from Kashyyyk. Our location has been compromised. Ben… Ben knows where you are.”

Leia was silent for a moment, before turning away from the screen to issue an immediate directive to her aides. When she turned back she was grim. “How did this happen, Rey?”

“There's things I need to tell you,” she admitted unhappily.

“That much I know. You’ve been keeping secrets since Crait.” Leia was not pleased with her, and Rey felt her disappointment like a dagger.  “I've got your coordinates. I’ll send Poe to collect you and you’ll rendezvous with us at our new base.”

“Where?” asked Rey. 

“Forgive me, I don't trust this channel.”

“I understand.” For a moment she had thought Leia would say she didn’t trust Rey. “Just tell Poe to be careful… the First Order’s fleet is in orbit. So is The Supremacy.”

Leia's forbidding expression was the last thing she saw before the channel was cut off. 

Rey sat back, dreading the truth that must eventually come out. 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. The Exile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the feedback, guys, you really keep me going! :)

It was the Millenium Falcon that came to pick her up from the docks on Tatooine. She raised an eyebrow as Poe emerged, gesturing for her to hurry aboard. Bringing the most notorious ship in the Resistance’s armada so close to the First Order’s fleet didn’t strike her as the wisest decision, but as Poe reassured her, being spotted was not as much an issue when there were few ships as fast as this one.

“We’d have to actually be caught to be, well, caught,” he said with a wry smile, but there was still something hurried and distracted about his manner.

If any of the First Order vessels registered the ship on their radars, none made any attempt to pursue, and in almost no time at all they had leapt to hyperspeed. The stars streaked past in a bright blur as Poe marvelled at the responsiveness of the Falcon compared to the old X-wing he’d been forced to take up since his last one got blown up. Again. 

They dropped back into normal space somewhere closer to the galactic core, judging by the density and brightness of the stars that peppered their field of view. Ahead, a hodgepodge flotilla of civilian freights and ships drifted in idle formation. This was currently all that was left of the Resistance’s fleet, with a few salvaged fighters hidden away in the largest freight. More ships would come in time, but it would depend on what could be donated by sympathetic allies to the cause.

Poe docked the Falcon inside a freight that looked as if it might have been soldered together from several smaller ships. Leia was already waiting for them at the base of the boarding ramp, leaning on the cane she had taken to using since the initial attack on the Raddus. Her face was unusually grim as she gazed up at Rey.

“With me, please,” she said simply and led the way through the busy hangar. 

There was a technician perched atop of a fighter, buried under a shower of sparks from the damaged fuselage she was slicing up. Rey didn’t realise it was Rose until the sparks abruptly vanished and the girl lifted her protective visor to peer down at her. Rose looked relieved to see her and gave a discreet wave, but like Poe, there was some anxiety there too.

Leia took her into one of the smaller storage rooms that doubled as a kind of conference room. The coterie of escorts that followed her everywhere were told to wait outside as Leia leant on the edge of a steel table and waited until the door had sealed shut. She looked expectantly at Rey.

“Talk,” she commanded simply. “Please.”

Rey knew this moment had been coming and she’d been rehearsing it in her head for most of the journey from Tatooine, but now all the things she had carefully planned to say and phrase came cascading out all at once like a dam that had only needed one small crack to break apart.

So Rey explained everything about how she’d stepped into a slaver’s trap laid to catch Wookiees, and how she’d fallen all the way to the forest floor where she may have been eaten had the slavers not arrived to collect her, and how they had planned to take her to Tatooine and sell her on the organ market until the First Order fleet had intercepted them.

“What a coincidence,” murmured Leia, her chin resting upon her palm.

She suspected something, that much was clear. Rey’s fingers twisted in her lap. “Not entirely coincidence,” she admitted slowly. “Ever since the island… I’ve been seeing Ben.”

“Seeing him… how?” Leia’s face was a mask of ice, as if one slip of an expression might crack her whole facade.

“Through the force,” said Rey, “he appears to me, and I to him, and Snoke claimed he bridged our minds, but he’s dead now and I still… I still see him.”

“Is he here now?” Leia asked sharply.

“No.”

“Good,” said Kylo softly as he paced around the table. He was looking curiously towards Leia, as if he could almost see her. “But be careful. My mother is stronger in the Force than she lets on. She can sense lies too.”

Rey refused to look at him, keeping her eyes focused only on Leia. Perhaps if she ignored him, he’d just fade away. Although from the way Leia’s head tilted as if she was listening to something, he might have been right about her perceptiveness.

“You realise this is how Snoke seduced Ben all these years ago, don’t you?” asked Leia. “That he bridged his mind with Ben’s and appeared to him the way Ben appears to you now? Nothing good will come of this, Rey. Ben wants you to join him, and with unfettered access to your mind, he will do everything he can to convince you.”

“Do you see how she speaks about me?” Kylo’s lip almost curled. “She never understood. She still refuses to. I’m just her greatest mistake.”

Rey swallowed, feeling the pressure of Leia’s intense gaze warring with her urge to look at Kylo. She didn’t know what to say, except she was sure it was bound to be wrong whatever it was. 

“I can’t be convinced,” Rey said. “I know what is right.”

“So did Ben, once. But after years of Snoke whispering in his ear, he turned.” Leia sat back.

“She’ll blame anyone but herself,” muttered Kylo, coming to stand directly beside his diminutive mother. Was it contempt in his face when he looked down at her? It would be easy to believe so, but Rey thought there was a kind of unutterable sadness in his eyes that only someone who had been abandoned by their family could know. Such was the intensity of his emotion that she could have sworn that - just for a moment - Leia’s gaze flicked towards him. 

“And this is how he found out our location, wasn’t it. Through you?” Leia said. 

Rey paled. “I-I didn’t tell him anything. It was an accident - I asked for help and he helped me, but he traced the slaver’s shuttle to Kashyyyk.”

“Then you should not have asked for his help. You know how easily flight paths can be traced.”

“She would rather you have died,” Kylo said, sliding away from his mother’s side to approach Rey once more. 

“I didn’t think - I was hurt, I just called out to anyone who could hear me.” Rey felt her face beginning to heat up. “But he said he wouldn’t attack. He said he had no interest in the Resistance.”

“And you believed him?”

“I… no, that’s why I’m telling you.” 

“I’m hurt,” said Kylo unconvincingly. Rey did look at him now, with the burning anger that said she might have struck him if he’d really been standing there in front of him. 

It felt like an interrogation, especially when Leia slipped a holopad from the pocket of her steel-grey robe and placed it on the table. “It won’t surprise you that we still have active agents on The Supremacy. I’ve received four separate reports that you were seen personally escorted to a shuttle by General Hux like an honoured guest. A further report states Kylo Ren himself carried you to the infirmary.”

A bolt of alarm shot through Rey’s stomach as she looked desperately to Leia. “I know how it looks-”

“It looks like you are consorting with our gravest enemy.”

“This is the real Princess Leia Organa,” Kylo whispered, bending close enough that she felt his breath fanning across her brow. “She’ll turn on you, just like she turned on me. You thought she could be the mother you always wanted, but when she never had time for her own son, what makes you think she’ll-”

A warm hand sudden closed around Rey’s and in an instant Kylo and his whispers disappeared. Rey blinked, seeing only Leia before her now, holding her hand within her own, grounding her. 

“Is he still here?” Leia asked her. 

Rey’s ashamed gaze dropped to the floor. “No.”

Leia believed her this time, but she did not let go of Rey’s hand, and Rey felt something about the touch was keeping Kylo at bay. 

“I know how it looks Rey. It’s exactly how he wanted it to look. Ben wanted you to be seen treated as a guest. He wants to sow doubt and distrust amongst the Resistance which looks to you as its hero at a point when we desperately need one. He’s manipulating you.”

Rey’s mouth fell shut and she slumped, eyes on a rusted panel near the edge of the floor. Of course Leia had seen right through the deception in a heartbeat, whereas Rey, for just a while there, had actually believed that perhaps Kylo had wanted nothing in exchange  for granting her freedom…

“I can keep a lid on these reports, but this  _ will _ come out. He intends it to. And the harm it will do…” Leia was shaking her head. “Well, it worries me less than his connection to you. You must end it.”

“I don’t think I can.” Rey realised with a pang that she didn’t want to.

“Then… you are currently our biggest liability,” said Leia heavily.

“What do you mean?” asked Rey softly, fearing she already knew the answer.

Leia took a long minute to answer, and she slid her hand over Rey’s tense arm. “The Resistance is setting up a new base, but… I do not think you should join us there. What you do not know, you cannot share.”

Rey jerked her hand away and stepped back. “You’re turning me away?” Tears welled and blurred her vision and she blinked them away angrily. 

“This isn’t a decision I have made lightly, Rey. I have no desire to abandon you - and you will be given every channel and every access code to reach out to us should you ever need us, but you need to understand. One more blow will shatter this Resistance entirely. I can’t risk it. I can’t risk that something similar to today happens again, and despite your best intentions, Ben  _ will _ manipulate you through this connection. I can see he already has you to some extent.”

“And what am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go?” Rey all but shouted.

“Take the Falcon,” said Leia, reaching forward to cradle Rey’s face in her warm, gentle hands. “Take this time to learn yourself and break free from this bond with Ben. Luke needed time too, when he was young, to stop being a Resistance fighter and learn how to be a jedi. And when you are free, come home to us. We’ll all be with you every step of the way.”

Hot tears streaked down Rey’s cheeks. “Where am I to go, Leia?” she asked again.

“Listen to the Force. Whenever I have opened my heart to the Force, it has never steered me wrong. I have listened to it today and its answer is plain… you have a journey to complete, Rey. You are not meant to be tied down by the Resistance before you have finished it.”

“It’s where I belong,” protested Rey.

“Belonging is not a place, it’s a state of mind. Friends - true friends - will always be there for you, even when you cannot always be together.”

“Leia,” she pleaded.

But Leia would not be moved, even if it was evident that Leia’s heart was breaking a little bit as she reached up and pressed a kiss to Rey’s cheek. “You will come home. I feel it. When the time is right. And perhaps...”

Leia trailed off, her gaze growing distant.

“What?” gasped Rey.

Leia gave her a wan smile. “A silly old woman’s regrets. But I wonder… I hope… that perhaps when you come home, you will bring Ben with you. The love of his parents was never enough, but you might be.”

“What do you mean?” Rey whispered through her tears. 

“Nothing. Never mind. It’s not your responsibility, Rey. It just seems to me that this connection goes both ways… and I know your mind and your will are stronger than my son’s. He’ll try to turn you, but his faith in darkness is the weaker. Do you understand?”

“I… I think so,” said Rey miserably. 

“And you understand why you must go?”

She nodded again, but the pain in Rey’s chest was a real, almost physical thing. She dashed away her tears and summoned a brave face that Leia must have seen through at once since the woman pulled her into a tender hug. It was almost all worth it, to be held like that, the way a mother might hold her own child, though she knew that it was Ben that Leia longed to embrace. 

Word always spread quickly amongst the Rebel crew, even when they’d been a large fleet. By the time Rey had finished washing and changing her clothes after her check in with the surgeon, it seemed like everyone knew she was leaving even if not all understood the reasons why. 

Finn and Rose were quick to offer to come with her, but Rey had reluctantly come around to Leia’s advice. This was a journey that could only be done alone. She didn’t have the right to drag her friends into this. For all the best will in the world, they did not and could not understand. 

“But we won’t get in the way,” Finn insisted.

“It’s not a matter of getting in the way… I’d be putting you in danger,” she told him, as she carefully packed a bag of fresh supplies. “Kylo Ren decreed that I’m a guest of the First Order. That’s not a decree that extends to anyone else in the Resistance. I won’t be in danger, but you would be.”

“That’s ludicrous - it’s all a trap Rey, you’re in more danger of falling into it than anyone!” Finn too her by the shoulders and turned her to face him as if that might make her see sense. “It’s a  _ trap _ .”

“Of course it’s a trap, I’m not an idiot,” she sighed. “But Finn… the trap was sprung weeks ago. I’m  _ in _ the trap. What I need to do is get out of the trap and take the cheese with me. Right?”

Fin blinked. “I’m not sure what the cheese stands for in this metaphor…”

“That’s probably a good thing. Take care of Rose, Finn.”  

When it came to say goodbye to Rose, she was a little surprised when the other girl lurched forward to hug her tightly. “Are you leaving because of my snoring?” Rose asked, eyes damp with tears.

“Yes,” said Rey. “And some other things too.”

“Whatever you need to do, just do it fast and come home, ok?” Rose told her. “And don't forget to call. Who else am I going to talk about engines with?”

Poe took her hand in a show of professional camaraderie, then tugged her forward to plant a firm kiss against her cheek. “Be good, Jedi girl. May the Force be with you.”

Rey smiled hesitantly. She knew it was a mantra among the Resistance, but right then it sounded like a prayer. She nodded wordlessly, realising that she might cry if she tried to say some heartfelt goodbyes. All she could manage was to call to BB8. The droid would come with her. She needed a copilot after all. 

She boarded the Falcon, armed with a fresh bag of clothes, her staff, and the pieces of Luke’s lightsaber. BB8 beeped merrily, pleased to be on an adventure with his friend Rey, and not quite understanding the misery that engulfed her as the Falcon doors whirred shut. 

Her heart felt a hundred times heavier as she watched the flotilla of Rebel ships shrink away and the silence of an empty ship pressed in around her. It was an illusion of choice, she thought. She had walked into this ship and left under her own power, but something about this moment reminded her of that hot day years ago on Jakku when she’d watched her family’s shuttle take off without her. 

She was not a child anymore, though the sense of bewilderment and abandonment hurt just as much.

In the absence of her friends, the Falcon drifted silently. Rey sat at the helm looked at the stars and felt… nothing. She did not know where to go. She did not know what to do. Leia had told her to listen to the Force, but all she could hear was the roar of her own blood in her ears. 

Something prowled at the edge of her senses, and Rey shivered, the fine hairs along the back of her neck rising. Out the corner of her eye she caught the movement of a black boot beside her chair and had to stamp down on her rising anger. Her current misery was entirely his fault. His manipulations had brought her into this isolation and for that she dearly wished to grab her blaster pistol and shoot him in the face - it wouldn’t kill him, but he deserved a good fright. Instead, Rey took a deep slow breath and tempered her feelings.

“You look so cast down,” she heard him say. “Oh dear, have the Rebels grounded you?”

“I haven’t been grounded,” she answered calmly. “I’ve been cast out.”

After a moment’s silence, Kylo stepped into view and the leather of his boots creaked as he sank down to his knee to be eye level with her. “I knew my mother could be ruthless, but that kind of cruelty… I didn’t expect that.”

Rey searched his face for some hint of conceit and insincerity, but she found none. “Didn’t you? Seems like this is exactly what you wanted.”

“I didn’t want to cause you pain,” he said, and he sounded genuine to her ears. “But you needed to see… how fragile the trust you relied upon was. See how easily it broke.”

Rey couldn’t help some of the anger that bled through into her voice. “Your manipulations didn’t work, Ben. Leia understood exactly what you were up to. She knows your act of kindness towards me was an attempt to sow distrust. She’s your mother - she saw through you in an instant.”

Kylo’s face hardened. “I helped you because you asked me to. I let you go,  _ because you asked to go. _ What else should I have done?”

“You wouldn’t help me like that unless it was self-serving in some way,” she said bitterly, averting her gaze.

“If you think you already know my thoughts, look into my mind. I know you can.”

“You’re not actually here,” she said. “I can’t.”

“You’ve done it before.” 

She watched him tug free the glove from his left hand and offer it up to her. Rey looked at it with a faint frown, very conscious suddenly of her own hands clasped loosely in her lap. The last time she had touched her bare fingertips to his, it had been almost electric, but in the sense that it had been like a current that looped between them, locking them together in place and unable to break free until Luke had come upon them.

As incredible as it had been, it had been frightening too. Rey wasn’t so sure she wished to repeat it now.

Seeing her reluctance, Kylo’s face clouded over. His hand curled into a fist and dropped away, rejected. Rey reacted before she knew what she was doing and leant forward suddenly to brush the tips of her fingers against his cheek. 

Kylo flinched so hard the contact was broken at once.

They hung there, in startled awkwardness; Rey, with her fingers trembling faintly just an inch from his rigid face, and Kylo with an expression of shock. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t be.” He recovered, quickly mastering whatever reaction she’d caused as he caught her hand and nudged it back against his damaged cheek. The warmth of his fingers trapped hers against his face and Rey was so curious at how solid and real he felt that she forgot the objective of this exercise. 

Kylo had to remind her. “Look.”

Rey let her eyes slide shut and pressed into him the way she’d done in the past. He offered no resistance. There was a sensation, a familiar one, like when she’d been standing in the rain on Kashyyyk staring into the deep barrel of crystal clear rainwater, seeing right to the bottom behind her own rippling reflection. She caught bits of memory, some of it her own, some of it that must have belonged to him. Some were things that couldn’t possibly have happened, and things that might never happen. Rey had been fooled by such visions before, when she had touched his hand and seen a premonition of him striking Snoke down and choosing  _ her _ \- but the vision had not warned her that what he really desired was to sit upon Snoke’s chair himself. 

Rey pulled her hand way, more confused than ever.

Kylo watched her face hungrily. “What do you see?”

“I’m not sure…” she said. “You think you’re helping me, but your idea of help…? You think breaking me away from the Resistance is for my own good, don’t you?” Rey pressed her hands to her face as a wave of dizziness overwhelmed her. She struggled to process the things their connection had shown her. “What do you  _ want _ from me?”

“I want what I’ve always wanted,” he said. “To teach you.”

Rey shook her head, remembering Leia’s warnings. “How do we end this? How do I get you out of my head?” 

“You can’t.” His voice was cold.

“There has to be a way.”

“Perhaps one…”

Rey looked at him sharply. “How?”

“Stop thinking about me.”

Rey stared in confusion.

“You haven’t noticed? That this connection only opens when we both think of each other at the same time?”

Was it true? Perhaps sometimes, yes, she had certainly been thinking of him before he’d appeared… other times she was not sure.

“So. Simply stop thinking about me, Rey, and you will be free.”

“It would help if you could stop thinking about me too,” she said.

Kylo’s gaze was warm, almost amused. “I’m always thinking of you.”

Heat rolled through her stomach and Rey scowled in fury at her own reaction. “The Supreme Leader of the First Order should have more important things to think about than a Rebel.”

“You’re no Rebel,” said Kylo. “But you could be so much more.”

Rey looked away, but it was hard to concentrate as Kylo raised himself up once more and leaned over her. His hands came down on the armrests of her seat, bracketing her arms. “Come back to me. I’d never turn you away. You feel it, don’t you? That your place is with me.”

She shook her head resolutely. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“You’ll change your mind.”

“I won’t.”

He straightened, and Rey felt like she could suddenly draw breath again. “So what will you do?” he demanded. “Float in space until you stumble upon some other jedi master to train you? The only jedi left in this galaxy is me.  _ You need me. _ ”

“I have the books of the first jedi,” she reminded him.

“Which you can’t read.”

“I will learn.”

“It would take you years-”

“If that’s what it takes.”

The exasperation and anger was building in him and she could see he was struggling to control his temper as his breathing quickened. “Fine. Rot in space for all I care.”

He turned away and faded on the spot. Rey sighed and felt a tension ease in her shoulders that she had not realised was there until he’d gone. She folded her arms over the console and buried her head in them as she tried to regain some of the balance he’d knocked out of her. Only then did she hear a quizzical beep behind her.

“Oh, BB8… how long have you been there?” she wondered.

BB8’s lens was scouring the cockpit, looking for some evidence of the person she’d been talking to.

“It’s difficult to explain,” she sighed. “Would you hook into the navigation for me?”

BB8 obeyed with a cheerful chirp, rolling up to the navigation board behind the co-pilot’s seat and opening one of his ports to extend an arm.

“Check the holonet… what’s the news on the First Order’s fleet location?”

BB8 told her that the traffic reports indicated that the Supremacy and its fleet had departed from Tatooine, heading in the direction of the unknown regions.

Rey mulled on this. It would be impossible to tell where the fleet was heading if it concerned the unknown regions… they were hardly mapped out and hyperlanes were rare and difficult to maintain. Yet some name kept bubbling up that she could not shake loose, one which she suspected she had never heard of until she’d just tapped into Kylo Ren’s mind. 

“BB8, what is Jedha? Is that a planet?”

A moon, BB8 told her, pulling the information straight from the net. It was far removed from any of the frequent routes through space and difficult to reach, and was only notable for once being strip mined by the Empire for its rich crystal resources. It had also been the site of the first weapons test of the original Death Star.

“And where is it?” she asked.

BB8 bleeped his response.

“That’s quite near the unknown regions, isn’t it?” she said, tugging at her lip. When BB8 beeped another question she wrinkled her nose. “No, I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure that’s where Ben Solo is… and I have absolutely no desire to even be in the same quadrant as that man. Just set a course for the nearest port. I’ll… I’m sure I’ll figure something out once we get there.”

There was little else to do once the course was set and the auto-pilot was steering the shp, Rey sat back and stared out into the darkness of deep space. She was waiting for one of those bright stars to speak to her, as Leia suggested the Force might show her the way, but all Rey heard was the hum of idling life support and nothing felt particular meaningful right then. 

BB8 rolled around the cabin behind her like a lost tumbleweed in the wind, occasionally bleeping questions that she didn’t know how to answer. Where were they going after the port? How long was this adventure going to be? Did she think they might be able to rejoin the rest of the Resistance soon? What did she suppose Poe was up to at that moment?

Rey didn’t know, and after a while she stopped answering and just lost herself in the dark spaces between the stars.

 


	5. The Broken Saber

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He didn't see much. Hardly anything, even.
> 
> (Probably everything.)

“It is not merely the risk of moving our flagship while in the midst of sensitive repairs, it’s the reason  _ why _ this was done. Not only has the Project been set back by 3 days, but so have fleet repairs - and for what? We have nothing to show for it.”

A few of the assembled generals nodded their agreement, but several more glanced at Kylo Ren to await his reaction. The attention irritated him beyond measure and Kylo’s thumb began to drum in a steady beat upon the round conference-style table. Those that knew him better could read this warning sign, but General Hux was fully swept up in his own oration as he circled the table, addressing the other generals.

“This criminal female should have been made an example of. We had an ideal opportunity in our hands to humiliate and demoralise the Resistance with a public execution - instead she was sent on her way with an all expenses paid trip back to her Rebel friends. This decision has made us a laughing stock!”

A pin could have been heard dropping two floors below in the silence that followed, and Kylo looked around at the generals. “I don’t hear much laughter,” he said quietly. 

“We must be cautious with our handling of celebrated Rebels,” said General Thorne, piping up for the first time since the meeting had begun. “The reappearance and death of Luke Skywalker has done much to energise word of mouth recruitment for the Resistance. I’m sure the Supreme Leader was simply being mindful of creating another jedi martyr.”

“I’m sure I do not need anyone to speak for me and explain actions that should be self-evident,” said Kylo shortly, his gaze lingering on Thorne for several moments longer than necessary. “Communication officers have circulated word amongst the crew that the girl is working for us. As expected, that rumour has reached the Resistance. Since she departed this ship she has not been shown or mentioned in any of the regular propaganda broadcasts, which tells us that the Rebels believe it at least to some degree. She’s alone, she’s untrained, and the Resistance doesn’t want her. If she isn’t currently working with us, she soon will be.”

“Your attachment to her is personal,” hissed Hux.

“It is,” agreed Kylo.

That seemed to silence the General, as he didn’t know quite how to follow up after this unconcerned admission.

Thorne cleared his throat. “I think it is a fine strategy. A jedi can cause more trouble for us dead than alive, but removing her as an asset of the Resistance is more useful in the long term, in addition to the possibility of acquiring her as an asset in the future. It is exactly the sort of strategy Supreme Leader Snoke has advocated in the past.”

“Yes, and we’re all very thankful for Snoke’s previous recruitment drives from the jedi order,” said Hux, casting a withering glare at Kylo in case anyone was in the slightest possible doubt as to which recruit he referred to.

Kylo resisted the urge to push his hand through his hair, or indeed, to choke half the people around the table. Hux could only be slightly more hostile if he’d been waving a pistol in his face, and if Thorne was any more of a crawler he’d be on the floor licking his boots. Not for the first time, he found he missed his former position as Snoke’s largely anonymous interrogator. Most of the generals had previously been indifferent or at least somewhat respectful of his place in the organisation, but none of the opinions now held around this table resembled indifference. Hatred, fear, derision and ambition oozed through the air like a miasma that might suffocate him. Holding onto his temper was a feat of endurance. It almost amazed him that Snoke had tolerated such meetings, but then Snoke had long since established his mandate to lead. Few around this table trusted him not to flip it by the end of the meeting, let alone trusted he had the head to re-establish the glory of the Empire.

“This is peripheral, we need to move on,” Thorne said. “We may have lost a few days of the projected timescale this week but overall the Project is proceeding with fewer difficulties thanks to Supreme Leader Ren’s actions on Jedha. The Partisan republican militias won’t recover from their last defeat, and the information gained from interrogating the captured members proved invaluable in rooting out their weapon caches. We’re still on course to complete by the end of the month.”

“Have we selected a target for testing yet?” asked one of the other generals.

“Sharn,” said Kylo.

Hux exploded again. “Sharn! There’s nothing  _ on _ Sharn! We need to target Coruscant - we could rid ourselves of this bastion of Republic sympathisers once and for all.”

“We’re targeting Sharn,” Kylo repeated. “Are there any objections?”

“I object, obviously-!”

Kylo slammed his hand flat against the table, just as Hux found himself slammed to the floor. The General tumbled out of sight behind the conference table and several of the other generals sat up a little straight and pretended not to notice.

“Are there any other objections?” Kylo asked the room.

There were not. The room had gone very quiet until Thorne spoke up again. “I think it’s an excellent idea,” he declared. A few reluctant murmurs of agreement joined his enthusiasm. Kylo released his hold of Hux.

“Then there is nothing more to discuss. Back to your posts.”

One by one the generals rose and left. Those that had attended via hologram flickered and disappeared, plunging the already dark room into further gloom. Hux limped out with whatever dignity he had left, though he looked like he didn’t know who to address most of his grievances to - Kylo or Thorne.

Once the room had emptied, Kylo sat forward, resting his elbows on the table, his clasped fists against his mouth. He often needed several minutes after such interactions, to pick his way through the tensions in the room and the truths and deceits that always warred when the topmost level of the First Order came together. No one rose to the rank of general without incredible, near psychopathic ambition, and those who had rose by merit sat right alongside those who had risen by simply removing their opponents one way or another. Hux was the latter, though figuring out the rest was difficult when they all came together in a din of egos.

As always in quiet moments he found his thoughts slipping away back to a more easily understood person, and like a vision he had summoned, he looked up and saw her there. She was standing a few metres away on the other side of the table with her back half turned toward him.

She must have been planet-side, for she was wearing a warm cowl and her hair danced and lifted in a breeze he could not see or feel in this quiet, warm room. It didn’t take her long to sense his gaze upon her and she turned her head slightly to glance at him once and then away again. She was talking to someone. Haggling. One hand lay on the holster of her pistol and the other was engaged in heavy gesticulating as she muttered in a language he hadn’t heard before.

It was easy to see the scavenger in her at a moment like this. With her eyes narrowed against the sun and her brow knit in concentration, she looked impenetrable. Every year she had spent fighting to survive, fighting for food and fighting loneliness all showed in her compact frame. Then she tucked her hair behind her ear like a young girl, a small tell of the insecurities she held close to her hardened surface. Her long fingers, dusted with colour and freckles from the sun sank back to her side. Then she was shaking her head and moving away. She disappeared into the shadows at the edge of the room and then he felt her disappear entirely.

Kylo still thought about her hand and felt an answering tingle on his cheek. The scar was stubborn and refused to heal properly, periodically splitting and needing further attention in the medical bay, but the tingle he felt was more of the memory of her touch. He dragged his gloved fingers over the marked flesh, as if he could still feel hers there.

It took him a moment to realise what he was doing, and he dropped his hand back to the table. She was a distraction, whether her image was in the room or not. There were more important things to indulge than imagining the touch of a distant woman.

“Saphis. Morn,” he said quietly, and two silent black shapes detached from the edge of the room and approached the table. “What do you think of Thorne?”

“A sycophant,” a rough whispering voice answered. The other shape was silent.

“Listen with the Force, not your ears,” Kylo said. “He’s compensating, attempting to deflect suspicion when the attempt on my life will be made.”

“Then kill him,” said Saphis simply.

“That’s the idea,” said Kylo. But it wasn’t as simply as running someone through with a lightsaber these days. “If he openly defied me it would be easy, but we have to play a different game now. Rig his shuttle to blow when he transports back to his command. Make it look like a Resistance attack.”

“As you wish.” Saphis and Morn bowed sligtly. “What about Hux?”

“What about him?”

“He  _ does _ openly defy you…”

“He’s plotting but he can’t see a way to stick the knife in yet, so he just barks… until he does figure out a way in, leave him. If we start killing any general for hating me, there would be none left.”

“That doesn’t seem like a bad thing.”

“It would be chaos,” said Kylo, gazing at the glossy reflections on the black table. “It’s appealing… from the deepest chaos can come the most elegant order. Half these old men were officers in the old regime, they talk about purifying the essence of the order, but they just want things to return to what they were. Tearing it all down to begin again… none of them have the guts to really do it.”

The two knights waited.

Kylo released the thought with a fraction of a smile. “We’ll complete the Project,” he said. “Then we’ll talk chaos.”

 

* * *

 

The city was teeming with people from countless worlds, and Rey felt adrift, like just another grain of sand in a desert. The more people she saw around her, the more alone she felt. Tired of searching the Kal’Shebbol markets, she pulled her cowl around herself in an unconsciously defensive manner and caved into the grawning hunger that she’d tried to ignore for the last few hours. Food markets and stalls were easy to find, though ones that served edible food for humans required some hunting.

Rey entered a kind of square full of pillars between which colourful sheets had been strung to shield the diners from the heat of the sun. Rey ordered a simple stew from one of the booths and went to find a clear table. As she sat and blew on the steaming broth, her roving gaze landed on a poster that had been pinned upon one of the pillars nearby. Poe’s handsome face - made even more handsome by the artist - gazed off into the distance as if looking towards a better horizon while a squadron of X-wings flew across the poster’s background over a beautifully painted sunset. There were several Poes, she realised, wistfully gazing out of more posters scattered on the walls of the food stalls, attempting to seduce the viewer into thinking they too could become an ace pilot for the Resistance. Some posters bore an image of Leia, looking far younger and a bit more doe-eyed than Rey recalled. Even Luke Skywalker’s face had returned to lead the Resistance, but like Leia the poster had polished the truth and the Luke on the posters was blond and boyish and decked in black.

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen these posters. The Resistance’s propaganda agents circulated them on the holonet and plastered them anywhere they might find recruits. There had even been a poster created with Rey’s image, but looking around, she couldn’t see it among the others. A few ripped scraps of paper on the pillars testified that some posters had been torn down… she wondered if they were her own, or if she was simply being paranoid. 

How far had the word of her disgrace spread? Leia had once called her the Resistance’s greatest hope, but now her name did not appear in the Rebel broadcasts. On the core worlds they talked about Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker still, and she’d heard Finn’s name mentioned more than once. If he didn’t have a poster by now, he soon would do. A stormtrooper turned Resistance hero was quite the inspiration. She was glad for her friend… and she tried to tell herself that it was all for the better that her name and face did not appear on every street corner of every world outside the First Order’s control. How would she go about her business if everyone kept stopping her to ask for autographs?

A thump on her leg made her look down, and found BB8 looking back at her impatiently.

“Just a few more stops and I promise we’ll go,” said Rey, lifting the bowl to her lips to drain the last of the stew. She rubbed her lips dry on her sleeve and collected her staff and satchel before headed back into the markets. She squinted around at the street markers that were written in at least twenty different languages and yet still weren’t that helpful. BB8 rolled gamely along behind her, occasionally getting kicked or shunted in the busy crowds and Rey had to hush angry beeping before he got himself into a fight in the middle of the market.

Eventually they came across a recess in an alley that bore a resemblance to the description Rey had been given by the last trader. The walls were covered with sheets of metal, torn and warped like they’d been ripped from battleships, and everywhere she looked there were tables lined with all kinds of exotic weaponry. When Rey first entered she wondered if the vendor had gone out for lunch until she heard a polite cough near a bookcase lined with ammunition. 

“I’m sorry,” blurted Rey, who had mistaken the owner of the shop for a footstool covered with a kind of shawl. “Are you D’artma?”

“Are you looking to buy?” asked the small creature.

“To fix actually… I’ve been to at least fifty different weapon traders and half of them said you were the one I needed to see.”

The vendor’s eyes glinted with interest and she turned to waddle back toward her counter, a long scaly tail dragging along the floor behind her. She climbed a stack of boxes to give her the height she needed to see over the counter. “Show me.”

D’artma didn’t mince many words. Rey reached into her satchel and careful laid out the pieces of the broken lightsaber upon the countertop like each broken shard was made of precious glass.

With a claw, D’artma sifted through the pieces like someone searching for the last peanut in a bowl of shells. She didn’t seem quite as precious over the weapon as Rey was.

“This is a lightsaber,” said D’artma after a moment. 

“Yes, I know.”

“It’s not yours.”

Rey frowned. “Of course it is, I’m not a thief.”

“If it was yours, you would know how to repair it,” stated the vendor.

“Well, ok, it was… left with me. The Jedi who made it… he died.”

“The last jedi,” agreed D’artma. “Luke Skywalker. You stole it from him?”

“I didn’t steal it,” Rey protested, and BB8 added his indignant beeps as well.

The small creature shrugged. “No one can mend this. Not even the best weaponsmith in Kel’shabbol can fix this - which is me. Your kyber crystals have cracked and even with new crystals this would not work. Only a Jedi can make them work.”

Rey sighed, fearing she had wasted an awful lot of time on this planet. “Then what am I supposed to do?” she asked.

“There are still working lightsabers around, mostly in the hands of rich collectors. You could try stealing a new one.”

“I’m not a thief!” 

It was hard not to feel as low as dirt as she made her way back to the docks where the Falcon was being refuelled and awaiting some overdue repairs on the heat shield plating near the rear where a few TIE fighters had scored a lucky shot or two. Rey went straight to the cargo-hold where she’d made up her bed (she had never been comfortable in the padded pods of the sleeping quarters) and emptied her satchel out onto the floor. The pieces of the lightsaber clattered onto the floor panels and Rey poked them dejectedly.

It shouldn’t have been that hard to mend. Rey was proficient enough with a soldering laser to fix what had broken, but there was no fixing the crystal that looked cracked and burnt out. It wasn’t simply that it had broken into pieces, it almost looking it it had overloaded and burst from within. Two equal forces pulling on it had finished it off.

And if only a jedi could fix it, Rey was out of luck.

She had hoped the books would be of use, but so far only the rich illustrations made any sense to her, and none of the illustrations included any helpful step-by-step diagrams of how to build and repair lightsabers. The closet she came was a chapter that featured extensive images of what looked like crystals with all kinds of faded colours, but without a translation for the text, she was no wiser for looking at them.

Rey ran her hands through her hair and sat back on her heels. She caught BB8 watching her and just shrugged at the droid. “Am I just wasting my time here?” she asked.

BB8 was silent for once, his lens swivelling between her and the pieces of the lightsaber. It felt like a diplomatic way of saying yes.

“I’m trying, I just… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she sighed. “Don’t I need a lightsaber to be a Jedi? But I need to be a jedi in order to fix it, and to do that I need a master to train me, but there’s nobody left and not even Luke managed to become a jedi without training… the only answers I have are these books that I can’t even read!”

Rey looked at the small pile of old tomes next to her bedding. “I wonder how hard it would be to design a program that can translate dead languages…?”

A derisive bleep was BB8’s answer to that dilemma, so Rey abandoned the thought and went back to the cockpit. Judging by the teeth-jangling bangs that started to fill the ship, the repairs were starting on the hull plating. Rey threw herself down into the pilot’s chair and noted with some relief that the button for a missed call was lighting up. Someone on a deep space channel had hailed her while she was out and about, and it looked like Finn’s identifier. Rey reverse the frequency at once, eager to hear his voice.

But someone else answered and explained that Finn was not available, and that they could not confirm or deny whether he was off on a mission or just visiting the refresher. Rey logged off with a despondent sigh and sat listening to the thudding hammers and drills that echoed through the hollows of the ship. They seemed to crash in time to the slow beat of her heart.

She almost missed the chirp of the communication console light up again. BB8 had to roll into her leg gently to give her a nudge, and as soon as she saw it, Rey slapped it with a hand and called out “Hello?” in a nakedly desperate tone of someone who had only droids and traders for company these days.

“Rey?” Rose’s voice crackled with distance but was unmistakable. “Someone said you called. Is everything ok?”

“Oh… everything’s fine,” Rey said, though it felt almost like a lie. “How are things?”

“Oh, you know. Classified.” 

“Right.”

She heard Rose sigh miserably. “I wish you could come home, Rey. I don’t have any girls to talk to, you know. I mean, there are women but they’re all in communications, or diplomacy or piloting… half of them down know one end of a catalytic converter from the other.”

“I’m having my thermal plates replaced as we speak,” said Rey

“Is that what I can hear? You should ask them to take a look at the hyperdrive manifold. I noticed that needed replacing last time I saw it. Expensive though…”

“Mm. Maybe I’ll head back to Jakku and start scavenging, I’d probably find a decent one there in a week or two.”

Rose was quiet on her end for a moment. “You’re not really going back to Jakku, are you? Finn is really worried about that - he keeps saying you used to go on and on about it and you even turned down a job from  _ The _ Han Solo because you wanted to go back there.”

“I’m not really going back to Jakku,” Rey said with a huff of humorless laughter. Although the thought had crossed her mind more than once - and there was nothing to stop her anymore.

“Good… though I get it. I sometimes think about going back to Hays Minor. It’s where me and Paige come from. I hated it there, I can’t tell you how much - every day I woke up afraid in that place. And yet, I still keep thinking about going back.”

“Why? Rey asked. She understood the feeling - the yearning - but she had come to accept that it was the wrong way to feel when everyone from Han to Maz to Finn had told her to never go back.

“I keep thinking about some of the people I left behind there, and whether things have changed and… and exactly how far I can shove my wrench up the ass of the Overseer. He was the who decided which kids would mine, which kids would become stormtroopers and which would become house slaves. He was the one who decided me and Paige would work in his kitchens.”

“There were people like that on Jakku too,” Rey told her, thinking of Plutt and various other gang leaders whose names did not deserve to be remembered.

“They’re not worth a second thought,” said Rose. “Are you sure you’re ok? You sound strange.”

“I’m just hitting some dead ends with the lightsaber and I’m tired,” she replied. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

“Of course. I’m always here… never going anywhere.”

Rey signed off and while doing her best to ignore her fast developing headache, she went to go see how the repairs were doing on the exterior. It was another hour before she was satisfied with the workmanship and that she and the Falcon wouldn’t turn into a fireball the moment she tried to leave the planet’s atmosphere. By then it was getting late and the light had almost faded. Rey returned to the Falcon and told BB8 she needed a bath.

The refresher in the Falcon was a cramped room and so far no one had actually told Rey how to use a shower - it was one of those things that others simply assumed everyone knew about. The scarcity of water on Jakku meant showering was a ludicrous luxury that few enjoyed, and Rey had grown up knowing only one way to get clean - with a bucket, a stool and a thin bar of soap. It was an ingrained habit now. 

She went into refresher and used the showerhead to half fill a bucket she’d grabbed from the kitchen. Then she sat on the floor and scrubbed every inch of her skin with a rag and a soap bar, occasionally dipping into the bucket to gain some lather. She paid special attention to her feet, the spaces between her toes and worked her way up from there. It was a relaxing ritual. When she reached her head she wetted her hair and carefully rubbed the soap through the damp stands until they were slick and the day’s grime was loosened, then she worked her way back down her body again.

When she came to run her soapy fingers between her legs she slowed down and closed her eyes. She felt the warmth seep through her body and sighed into her own touch. The last of the day’s tension eased away as she focused on the pleasure curling low in her belly. She didn’t have much experience to draw on for her imagination, only the novels and periodicals she’d picked up in the markets in Jakku, and so she imagined what she’d always imagined since she was a girl - the heroes with the touches described as being like fire and voices that stirred primitive things in women’s souls. 

Rey imagined being touched and stroked by hands, large and warm, reassuring in their gentle strength. She imagined being kissed. She imagined it was like how Rose described, as something that she would feel throughout her body when it was the right one. She wanted to spread her hands across a hard, broad chest and dig her hands into soft black hair of silken waves-

It was Ben. She was thinking of Ben.

A little too late she realised her mistake as she felt the telltale shift in her mind as the familiar connection bloomed open. Rey abruptly grabbed the bucket and dumped the now-cool water over her head and was already reaching for the drying sheet before all the soap suds washed away. With the sheet wrapped hastily around her sopping form, she threw herself out of the refresher and looked around.

She saw only BB8 - who looked up very guiltily from the satchel he’d been rummaging through with his metal pincers.

“Hello?” she called cagily, hoping no one answered.

She listened to quiet ship and then listened to what her own sense of the Force told her. Perhaps she’d been mistaken about the connection opening, for it seemed perfectly inert now. Her paranoia might have been to blame, but Rey could have sworn…

It didn’t matter now, she told herself, and shot BB8 a reproachful scowl. “If you want to go snooping in my bag, just ask. There’s nothing interesting to droids in there.”

In response BB8 held up a comb that had been gifted to her from Rose. Having no hair, he found it very interesting.

“I’m sure,” she muttered, and collected the comb from the droid and marched off to the cargo-hold where her bed awaited. Only once she’d dried and pulled on a loose shirt did she feel a little more secure, and she sat upon her simple bed and began to comb her damp hair.

It was not a bad place to sleep. The hold was usually warmed nicely by the engines, the space was appreciable and it reminded Rey of her little home back on Jakku with its ugly metal walls.

Then the connection reopened and Rey blinked up at Kylo Ren standing near her bed.

She met his gaze and noticed how quickly he averted his eyes. Her stomach dropped. “How much did you see?” she whispered.

He stared off into the distance, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Not much. Hardly anything, even,” he said.

“Oh no... no, no, no,  _ no,”  _ She bent over, her face in her hands. Why couldn’t the ship just implode and kill her right now? “Just go away and leave me alone, I think I’m going to cry.”

“Don’t overreact,” he said, facing her again. “It was bound to happen. Just forget it.”

That was easy for him to say and Rey had to turn to face the wall to hide the fiery storm of crimson that had engulfed her face. She brushed her hair furiously and hoped he would be gone soon enough, especially as she was still only wearing a shirt that hardly covered her bottom and her legs. Although it seemed silly to worry about bare legs after what he might have just seen. 

“Where were you earlier?” she heard him ask. 

“What?” Her comb paused in her hair. 

“I saw you earlier today, it looked like you were bartering. You were speaking a language…”

Rey welcomed the diversion and cast her mind back. She had glanced him in the market, it was true, looking dark and pensive in the crowd though she was glad he had not approached her. “The language is Grenk… I wouldn’t say I’m fluent but Grenki traders usually came to Jakku during the winters and they don’t often speak Basic.”

“If you pick up languages so easily, why do you struggle with the Jedi texts?”

The comb jabbed her scalp and she hissed in pain. “Because it’s written, I suppose,” she mumbled. “I’m not… I’m not as good with written language. No one ever taught me to read and write.”

She heard the shock in his voice. “You can’t read?”

“Of course I can read!” She snapped, turning to glare at him. “I taught myself - but I can only read Galactic Basic.”

“I could give you the blueprints to those old programs I wrote,” Kylo went on. “The ones I used on the texts originally.”

“You would do that?”

“I could.” He seemed to be making a distinction. “If you gave me the Falcon’s transmission ID I could send it to you-“

“And then you could track me wherever I went, no thanks.”

“So you won’t accept my help and I imagine you’re struggling to find someone else who can… what’s your next move? Are you going to try and track down weaponsmiths to fix your blade? Maybe that’s what you were up to today… but I’ll save you some time - no one can fix that old lightsaber. You need to find a more productive use of your time.”

“Maybe I’ll return to Jakku and go back to scavenging,” she said bitterly, “Because I absolutely have no idea what else I’m supposed to be doing with my time.”

“Why don’t you go back to Jakku?”

Rey balked at him. “Are you serious? Jakku is hell. There’s nothing there for me.”

“What about your parents?”

Rey felt her fingernails dig into her palms. “They’re dead,” she reminded him. “You said so yourself.”

Kylo’s reveal had cut her deep, all the deeper because it was a truth he had gleaned from her own mind. She already knew it, she had simply managed to fool herself for over ten years.

“But it still bothers you, doesn’t it? You still have questions.”

“I spent my whole life on Jakku, if there were answers for me there, I would have them by now.”

“Ah, but now you know what the real questions are.”

“There’s nothing else I need to know-”

“What’s your mother’s name?” Kylo asked her.

Rey stopped combing her hair and she gazed at the wall. She thought she had known the answer to that question a long time ago, but now she was no longer sure.

“What’s your family name? Did you have siblings? Exactly how much did they get paid? What were you worth to them?”

“Some things I don’t need to know,” she whispered.

“You’re still stuck in the past, I can feel it. You won’t let go. So go back to Jakku and find out the truth of who you are, even the things that hurt. Finding out the truth about yourself… is freeing.”

He seemed to be speaking personally and Rey looked at Kylo curiously. “What truth freed you?”

“When I was about your age, I learned a truth that my family had hidden from me and the rest of the galaxy since before I was born; that Darth Vader wasn’t just some scourge from the old war, he was my grandfather. Everything made sense after that. The way my family looked at me, the way I struggled with my thoughts… it all had a reason, and it gave me a purpose I had been denied until that moment.”

A cold feeling swept through Rey. He had described his downfall, not his freedom, although she didn’t know if he would have turned out any better if the truth had been concealed from him. To have struggled with darkness and been feared without understanding why couldn’t have been easy. 

Kylo stepped closer and crouched down. Even then, he seemed to tower over her. “Who bought you?”

“A creature named Unkar Plutt”, she said, looking at the folded pleats along his sleeves that resembled carefully layered armour plates.

“Then he knows the truth.”

“I’ve asked him before, but he just found it amusing. He would never tell me the truth.”

“But you know how to take the truth from people’s minds now,” he told her. “You’re not a scavenger anymore. You’re a woman of immense power.”

She lifted her eyes to meet his and thought she saw the esteem with which he held her, along with the way his admiration seemed to extend to her legs. She caught him glancing down at them, then realised he was so close she could count the smattering of freckles across his face. “Do you really think I could find out what happened to them after all this time?” she asked him.

His eyes wandered back up her body to her own. “I think you could do anything you wanted.”

What she really wanted was bend his own mind and make him listen to reason and compassion… but that seemed like a complete fantasy. He certainly knew how to sound flattering when he wanted, and though she knew he was not physically present, her senses were entirely fooled. Rey found herself watching his lips and thinking back to that conversation with Rose about kissing and how it felt to press your mouth against another person’s.

Kylo gently eased away, rising to his feet. “Goodnight, Rey.”

“Goodnight,” she echoed, feeling herself sway a little as if some little force of gravity had tried to pull her after him. When she looked up again, he was gone, and the cargo hold was empty but for herself and some old containers.

Rey swept a hand  through her hair for a final time and settled herself into bed, but it was hard to sleep with this unfamiliar restless energy that wouldn’t dissipate and kept her mind spinning with the faces of old enemies on Jakku and new friends and just where exactly Kylo Ren’s face fit on this spectrum.

  
  
  



	6. The Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've managed to catch some kind of flu twice in two weeks, so I'm a little behind my update schedule!

An achingly familiar wave of heat hit Rey as the door lowered to form a ramp into a sea of sand. She had grown accustomed to just how cold the rest of the galaxy was compared to Jakku, and though she hadn’t exactly missed the searing heat of the desert, her concept of an ideal temperature was a little higher than others. Wrapping the black linen shroud loosely around her head and shoulders, Rey descended the ramp with her old staff and took stock of the land. Niima outpost lay ahead like a heap of litter, barely distinguishable from the old wrecks that scattered across the graveyard, and the creeping brown clouds from the west hinted that a dust storm would arrive by nightfall.

Rey headed toward the settlement, still not entirely sure she was doing the right thing. It wasn’t too late. She had wrestled with the decision for most of the night and then most of the following two nights after. There were a hundred good reasons not to come back to Jakku, and she’d listed them all and still somehow ended up back here. It was not simply that she had left under a cloud, hence the need to hide the Millenium Falcon behind a dune and sneak back into town. It was how long she had fought with herself to realise this was not the place where she needed to be. 

But there were truths here that she could not ignore.

With the shroud pulled across her face, she made her way through the outpost, hoping to remain incognito. There were some new faces, but most were the same people she had always known, exactly where she had left them. The water vendor was still at his pump, barking at a new apprentice about letting water droplets escape the drums. Constable Zuvio still roved in his patrols, and was probably still better off avoided even when you weren’t breaking any rules. Rey paused near the scrap shop. It was still full of scavengers, mostly children, elbow deep in grease and tar, scrubbing and stripping components. Rey looked down at her own palms, still marked and calloused from the days she’d spent at these work benches.

“Nice disguise, Rey.”

Rey glanced sharply behind at her at the large creature who was just arriving with an enormous load of scrap metal bundled on his back.

“Oh, hello, Deek,” she sighed, letting the shroud fall from her face. “What gave me away?”

“The staff. The general outline. That a bunch of the others already said they’d seen you.” Deek blinked at her slowly. “You shouldn’t be here. Plutt has about twenty bounties on your head for that ship you stole.”

“Where is Unkar Plutt?” She could see the booth at the centre of the outpost from here, but the shutter was drawn and only a couple of Plutt’s mooks could be seen loitering near it.

“You know him… he’s never far.”

Deek lumbered on and Rey cast an eye around. Plutt had all sorts of boltholes that he used during the worst of the midday heat. Although if what Deek had said was true, then certainly word would reach him soon enough that she was back. Moving on, she continued to rove between the old stalls she knew off by heart. She’d never really had time to wander aimlessly like this; she had only ever come through the markets on her way to trade junk or on her way to find more. There had never been the money or the time to stop and browse the more ornate trinkets that turned up in the desert. The vendors all knew her, but there was something different in the way they looked at her now.

She wasn’t one of them anymore and they knew it. The old women who used to nod at her just stared instead, and scavengers she’d worked alongside for years now turned away. Rey had not stepped back into her old world like stepping back into a well-worn shoe - she was too different. She was changed.

Rey stopped at a stall that sold the bits of jewellery and novelties that had been pulled from the crew quarters of the old imperials ship; bracelets, hand mirrors, medals of office. One necklace in particular caught her eye for its resemblance to one she’d seen Luke wearing; something resembling a crystal suspended on a silver chain. Rey touched it gently.

The woman who manned the stall watched Rey with narrowed eyes. “You got money to pay for that?” she asked.

Rey looked up at her. “I wouldn’t trade actual money for your junk, Marie,” she said.

“You sold that ship, right?”

“No.”

Marie sucked her teeth. “Stupid,” she sighed, her gaze sliding past Rey. “You should never have come back, Rey.” 

Marie turned away, pretending to busy herself with some stock beneath her stall as a large hand landed on Rey’s shoulder, spinning her around. A group of scavengers had gathered around her, their faces stony and tense. She recognised them at once as the gang that answered directly to Unkar Plutt.

“Plutt wants to speak to you,” said the one with his hand still in a vice around her shoulder.

“What a coincidence,” she said. “I wanted to speak to him too.”

With a jerk and a shove she was pushed into motion, flanked on all sides by men who had no intention of allowing her escape. She was marched through the market towards the shipyard at the edge of the outpost. Most people who saw them coming averted their eyes and scrambled out of the way. Constable Zuvio scrutinised them ferociously as they passed, but there was nothing he could do. Rey didn’t call for help. She let herself be led toward a large cargo freight that had been parked in the same spot of years - it had acted as one of Plutt’s gambling cub houses for as long as she’d been on Jakku. 

As soon as they were through the door, the thin facade broke and the staff was ripped from her back in the same motion that someone shoved her to the floor. The door sealed up and the heat and light of the desert vanished, leaving her in an echoing chamber filled with darkness and the stink of smoke and drink. The scavenger men circled around her and Rey sensed the rising tension. These men wanted to beat her, to kick her and thrash her until she bled - to rip out chunks of her hair and spit on her face. 

Rey had once used all her wits and stealth to avoid situations like this. The thought of being cornered without protection had frightened her so much it had driven her from the outpost to seek her home in the most remote piece of junk she could find with a door she could lock. Now she didn’t know what she felt, the emotions from the men around her were so strong and savage they drown out her own. Rey gazed up at them in faint bewilderment and belatedly realised that of the men circling her, one was standing still, watching her impassively.

“Ben…” she breathed.

She felt the blow coming a split second before it landed. Pain lanced through her brow and she nearly slumped to the floor again. Cradling her head, she sought the one who had struck her and saw a scavenger standing over her, gripping her own staff. He raised it again.

“Not yet,” grunted a voice from behind the wall of me. “You can have her later, along with three extra portions for each of you as promised.”

The men filtered away, leaving her alone with none other than Unkar Plutt. He was sat at one of his gambling tables, freed of the protective plates he wore outside to protect his delicate skin from the scorching sun. In his meaty fist was a short metal pole with what looked like an electric outlet. Rey sat upright and met his stare evenly.

“I always treated you well, Rey,” he said. “Better than the rest. And you repaid me by stealing my ship.”

Rey had nothing to say to that. It was rich for him to be sore over a ship he himself had stolen, and it would make no difference to argue her case that it was her life or that ship - Plutt would certainly believe she should have let herself die before taking his property.

“Where is it?” he demanded, flecks of mucus oozing down his face.

“The ship? It’s about half a mile east of here, behind a dune.”

Unkar Plutt leaned back, looking at her with obvious surprise. “You brought it back?”

“A flying visit,” she said. “I’ll be leaving in it shortly.”

Plutt’s booming laugh echoed around the room. It almost hurt her ears. “You don’t think you’ll be leaving, do you? That ship belongs to me.  _ You _ belong to me.”

Rey felt an anger like nothing else she had ever experienced. “ _ I do not belong to you, _ ” she hissed.

“If it wasn’t for me, you’d be long dead, girl,” Plutt said, examining the electric prod with casual interest. “The only reason those men left you alone all those years was because I told them to. The only reason you stayed fed was because  _ I _ fed you, even when you brought me nothing but shit. You should have joined all the other girls of your kind in the cantinas, disgracing yourself for credits, and the only reason you did not was because  _ I  _ permitted it.”

He grunted another laugh as he pointed the prod at her. “You can say goodbye to my protection now, Rey. I thank you for returning what you stole, but I can’t trust you now. Once I let my men get their fill of you, I’m selling you on to the brothels. Such a shame. You were such a good scavenger.”

Rey climbed back to her feet, her hands trembling with rage. “You don’t own me,” she whispered. “You never owned me.”

He snorted, a disgusting sound that set of folds wobbling. “I bought you, and you should be grateful-”

“Grateful!” Rey exploded.

“Anyone else would have used you up and discarded you long ago, but my kindness to you was the only thing-”

“Shut up!” Rey snarled, thrusting a clawed hand toward him.

Plutt fell silent. His mouth worked but no sound came out. He hammered on his throat as if he might dislodge what had closed off his voice, then he turned his watery eyes to stare at her incredulously.

“Much better,” Kylo said approvingly.

“I didn’t come here to listen to you prattle about your kindness for only making my life a  _ near _ living hell instead of a complete one,” Rey said. “I have questions and for once you will answer me.”

She released her hold on his throat and heard his wheezing breath as his voice returned. “What was… what did you do to me?” Plutt gasped.

“You bought me. From who?” Rey asked.

Plutt’s fists curled and he surged to his feet, knocking back the chair he sat in. He was no small man and he towered over Rey even from a distance. “You barge in here and make demands?! The cheek of you!” He lifted the electric prod, only to find it yanked swiftly from his grip. It sailed across the room, straight into Rey’s raised hand.

She levelled it at him. “Who sold me?” she shouted.

“Give that back to me at once, Rey!” he bellowed back.

Kylo looked on, shaking his head. “You’re wasting your time. He’s a simple creature who doesn’t understand anything but brutality and bullying. You won’t reason with him.”

“Tell me what I want to know,” Rey warned.

“Or what?” he snarled, calling her bluff.

“Show him,” Kylo urged her.

Rey glanced at him, disturbed at how easy it would be. It felt like something inside her was fighting to break free, straining against a fraying leash that Kylo wanted to see break. She knew what he wanted. She knew she couldn’t do that. All the same, there was Plutt, just standing there and embodying everything she hated about Jakku, everything she hated about herself, and standing in the way of a truth that had tormented her entire existence.

But the moment she took her eyes off Plutt, he took his chance and charged her. Rey flicked her wrist and sent him slamming into the wall.

The crash of Plutt’s considerable bulk must have rattled the whole ship, for at once the doors to the bay snaked up and the scavengers surged back inside. They needed only a moment to take stock of a dazed Plutt on the floor before they seized their clubs and hammers and descended on Rey.

There was no reasoning now. Rey swung and struck, dodging deadly blows and kicks aimed at crippling her, fighting for her life and fighting with rage. The prod was knocked from her hand by a lucky blow on her wrist, and Rey launched herself at the man who dared to wield her own staff. She tore it back in seconds, cracking one man over the head and jabbing another in the stomach. One came at her with a sharpened hammer, and in a blur Rey freed the pistol from her hip and shot him dead between the eyes.

His body hit the floor, then so did another. Rey thrashed and screamed and channeled the force to push away two men who threatened to overwhelm her. When she whirled on a scavenger holding nothing but a shiv, she lifted the pistol to take aim once more, and even as she watched him scramble backwards to escape her, she squeezed the trigger.

The room went quiet but for the pounding of her heart in her ears.

Rey looked around, ready for her next opponent… but there was no one left. Whoever did not lie dead or barely conscious on the ground had escaped, and there was no one left between her and Unkar Plutt now, still slumped against the wall, looking at her furiously with impotent anger.

She raised the pistol toward him. “Tell me everything you know about my family,” she said with a deadly calm at odds with the white hot storm inside her.

Plutt bared his teeth. “I would not… give you the satisfaction,” he wheezed.

Kylo’s shadow fell across her extended arm. “If he won’t give it to you, take it,” he said simply.

Rey had only done it once to Kylo himself, and she had hoped she would never need do it again. But Plutt was different. Plutt was scum. She raised her free hand towards him and narrowed her focus of the force to an almost pin-prick precision, boring into a weak mind wrapped in such ego and delusions of importance that one might at first mistake his will as strong. It caved in an instant as Plutt writhed and moaned in pain and horror at the intrusion.

“My parents… who were they?” Rey asked.

At her prompting, Plutt’s mind obligingly brought forth the memories. A thin man… a once handsome face gone to seed, addictions etched into the premature lines of his face and the grey at his temple. He had a name. Plutt knew him very well. The man came at least once a month to trade something new to pay his debts. First he’d brought his wife’s jewellery, then he’d brought heirlooms and ornaments, clothing and some prized working animals, and after this he’d brought the deeds to his land and his modest farm, and when he’d finally had nothing left but his ship and his daughter, he had traded in his daughter.

Rey felt heavy tears slice down her face.  “What happened to him…?”

He hadn’t gone far. Plutt hadn’t really wanted the girl, he’d wanted the ship. That very same night he had sent his gang to follow the shuttle to the city. In a few hours they were back with the shuttle in hand, the money Plutt had paid for the daughter, and a fresh pool of blood that had needed to be hosed away before the ship could be refitted and sold on again.

Rey had been waiting her whole life for a man who had been dead within hours of saying goodbye.

Her hand dropped numbly to her side. Rey could hardly even see Plutt anymore through the tears.

“You had him killed,” she whispered. “Did you kill my mother too?”

Unkar Plutt frothed and snarled. “ _ He _ killed your mother,” he grunted. “She refused to sign over the deeds so he buried her in that pitiful plot and sold it to me while her body was still warm!”

Rey furiously drove back into his mind to hunt for the truth. He wasn’t lying. She saw the woman, gaunt with hunger and fatigue, long hair in a thin braid. Plutt had never spoken to her, only seen her from a distance, usually scolding her child constantly for asking too many questions, for wanting to play, for wanting to go home. One day the man had come to sell the farm, explaining his wife’s absence as a visit to her family, but when the farm had come into Plutt’s possession with one freshly dug grave, he knew better.

Who knew where her father’s body lay now… he’d been thrown from the airlock somewhere over the vast desert and left for the pickings of the wild animals.

“You stole me,” she said. “Like you stole everything else. You took everything from my family!”

“Julan destroyed that family - he did you the greatest favour by handing you to me!”

Rey’s finger spasmed on the trigger of the pistol. She wanted to pull it ever so dearly, and see this awful creature face justice for all the misery he had caused in his long ignoble life.

She felt Kylo’s gaze upon her, burning in its intensity, watching what she would do next.

It took a great deal of effort, but Rey lowered the trembling pistol until it pointed at the floor.

“If I ever see you or any of your men come after me again, I will be back, and next time I will not hesitate to end you,” she told him thickly. 

Rey turned and swept out of the cargohold and back into the blinding sun outside. It felt like she hadn’t seen it in a week, and no matter how hot the air was, nothing could warm the cold feeling inside her.

Kylo stood in front of her, blocking her path. “You should have finished him off,” he said, sounding confused that she had not. “He wouldn’t be missed.”

Rey closed her eyes. “I need to be alone. Please. Just leave me alone.”

She ran forward, straight into him and through him, and then she kept on running.

 

* * *

 

  
  


Rey was used to being alone. When she was sixteen an unusual shift in Jakku’s winter brought a sandstorm that lasted almost a week. Rey had learned fast that one needed to stockpile food for winter, and she had been careful to halve her rations in the preceding months to make sure she had windfall for hard times like this. When the storm had struck, she had sealed up the hatch of her make-shift home and made herself comfortable. There would be no more trips to the outpost, no more treks towards the ‘graveyard’ to look for salvage. There was nothing to do but wait out the storm.

From morning to night, the wind howled and the sand scoured the exterior of the old AT-AT that gave her shelter. Rey occupied herself with mending her boots and catching up on her reading of various flight manuals. They were a little dry, but a good sleep aid. When she grew bored of the research she usually picked up a beaten old holopad she’d once picked up in the market in exchange for some duranium scraps; it was loaded with hundreds of old novels and serials. Initially, Rey had not been convinced of their value, although she now believed it had been the greatest bargain purchase of her life. The holopad stayed by her bed and each night she delved into a new story. 

Some were a little like the oral nursery tales that had been told to all Jakku children, about demons that lived in the centre of the planet, who cried tears of glass because they could not create life. But others seemed to weave real history with fiction, such as the serials that detailed the fall of the Empire at the hands of the brave and powerful Luke Skywalker and the plucky Resistance. Those were some of her favourite stories, though so fantastical in some aspects that she suspected most of it was untrue. One of her favourite characters was a woman named Shara Bey, an ace pilot who flew for the Resistance. Sometimes Rey liked to pull on the old rebel helmet she had found in a dune and pretend she was Shara, flying in formation with a squad at her back as she took down a death star.

As Rey had grown older, there were other stories that she found herself turning to. Stories of love. These stories usually involved a girl in possession of a suitable virtue - who was exceptionally kind, or clever, or beautiful - who met an equally wonderful boy and proceeded to spend the rest of the story falling in love, or falling in love immediately and trying to overcome whatever obstacles kept them apart.

During the sandstorm, there was a lot of time to read. On the third day of howling winds and sands, Rey picked up the holopad and selected a new story. This one was about a poor farmgirl who was unappreciated and unloved by the rest of her family, who vastly preferred her spoiled half-sister. When a handsome Prince who ruled half the galaxy and owned about 300 palaces arrived, no matter how beautiful the family tried to make the half sister, and no matter how much mud they smeared over the farmgirl’s face, or how much they ripped her clothes and tried to cover her hair with moudy scarves and straw, they could not stop her natural beauty shining through. They could not stop the Prince from falling in love with her.

And so in the dead of night, the family took the farmgirl and took her far away, abandoning her in an ancient forest full of spirits and monsters that might do what they were too cowardly to do, before returning home to try and disguise the step-sister as the Prince’s chosen bride.

At this point in the story, Rey let the holopad fall on her chest and her imagination wandered almost to the edge of the stars. She pretended that this was why she had been left on Jakku. A jealous step-mother had abandoned her, but out there waiting for her was a gorgeous Prince with so much money she would never have to scrub another piece of scrap for food as long as she lived. He was looking for her, and already deeply in love with her, and when he finally found her… they would  _ kiss _ .

Rey tried to picture the face of a gorgeous prince, but there were not all that many humans on Jakku, and the few she saw were desert-rough. It was not that important. Neither the wealth nor the handsomeness of the Prince interested her as much as the idea of being loved so completely and unconditionally. That was what she fantasized about. It was the reason why she adored the stories of great love and romance… because it was something she had never had. Something she might never have. Stories of war and violence and adventure were all well and good, but Rey only had to step out of her hovel to find those things for herself each day. Love was something that could not be dug out of sand dune or uncovered by hours of scrubbing.

Love was out there, among the stars.

For now, Rey could only find love in her holopad stories. She picked it up off her chest and returned to reading as the sands continued to shift and dance outside.

It was a week in which she did not see another living soul. 

  
  


* * *

 

  
  


Kylo paced the length of his quarters with his fists clenched spasmodically as if looking for something to choke. It was the middle of the night as far as the crew of the Supremacy was concerned, and a droid had tried to remind him that he had obligations at six, and so he needed his rest. The droid had not been able to dodge the hefty steel paperweight that Kylo has thrown at its central processing node and it had wheeled away with a definite dazed whistle. He had not been bothered since.

He was waiting, probing the Force for that connection though he still had not figured out how to open it on command - he suspected it depended on Rey. He could not impose on her at will, however convenient it would be, and had to wait for her to let him in.

It was difficult to remain patient. From the moment he’d met that girl, he’d known there was a beautiful darkness in her that she wasn’t even aware of. With no knowledge of what the light or the dark was or that Jedi of old would have compelled her to choose, she was an untainted vessel of the Force. He’d almost lost hope when he’d realised she had found Luke Skywalker, knowing the indoctrination that would follow.

He’d hoped for a moment like this, for her to be experience how powerful rage could make her once she tasted it. He’d glimpsed it in the forest, when she had knocked him down and considered killing him there and then. She had hated him, pure and simple, the way a child hated a monster.

But what she felt for her supposed owner was a mess of confliction and revulsion that had been building for years. If she had murdered him while he lay defenceless, she would have taken her first greatest step toward taking his hand.

But she had run.

Kylo unleashed a shout of wordless frustration and punched the wall. The lights behind the panel flickered but his knuckles hadn’t left much of a dent. It was a reinforced wall, put in place after the last time he’d slashed it to pieces with his lightsaber. The unexpected pain in his hand momentarily distracted him, and he looked down at his gloved hand, observing the sting and the way it focused him.

Then at once he felt her presence and turned slowly.

Rey was standing in the middle of his room. Her lashes were spiky with dried tears, but she was no longer crying. She gazed around herself in muted anguish, a strong wind whipping around her body. It had torn her hair free of the bun she’d been wearing earlier, and the black linen lifted free of her shoulders, flicking through the air above her like a sail.

“Rey…”

She didn’t look at him. Wherever she was, it held her attention.

“Where are you?” he asked. Sometimes when he concentrated her could make out the details of her surroundings and the people she interacted with. If he touched her, he could sometimes feel her location as if he was there with her, but he would never presume to reach out unless she invited him to.

“I’m at the farm,” she said, her voice sounding hollow.

He frowned. “What farm?” 

“My farm. I grew up here… my family lived here.”

So she was a farmgirl after all. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than a scavenger. “What do you see?”

“Nothing,” she shook her head despairingly. “There’s nothing here. If there was a house here it’s gone… my mother’s body is buried here, but where? I don’t see a marker. There’s  _ nothing, _ Ben. What was the point of all this?”

“Your mother’s name…?”

“Loria.”

“Your father?”

“Julen.”

“And siblings?”

“None… no one. It’s just me,” she whispered. “And my name… my name isn’t even Rey. That’s just the name the Scavengers called me, because of that stupid helmet I never took off.”

“Your name is Rey,” he told her. “We make our own choices in this life, and you can choose to leave that old name behind in the dust with the bones of your family who never deserved you. Your name is Rey now.”

Her eyes flashed on his. “Your name is Ben Solo. That’s the truth of who you are. My name is Kira Boon. That is  _ who I am _ . Maybe you want to bury your past where no one can find it - but I didn’t have a choice! It was taken from me!”

“Is that who you want to be now? Kira Boon, daughter of impoverished addicts from Jakku’s dust belt?”

Her gaze slid away, conflicted. “I wish,” she began, her voice trembling, “I wish I had never come here.”

He stepped in front of her, forcing her to look at him. “Do you regret knowing the truth?”

“It hurts,” she whispered. 

“It usually does.”

“I thought it would free me - make things clearer and I’d know what to do.” Her face crumpled. “I feel more adrift than ever.”

She looked so lost and alone, Kylo felt something inside him move for her. He had known this journey would hurt her, but he hadn’t been prepared to feel sorry for her. He slowly held out his hand. If he could touch her and see what she saw, then maybe he could understand something that he himself had lost the ability to feel long ago.

Rey saw his outstretched hand and misunderstood. She stepped forward, and suddenly her body was against his, her arms wrapped around his waist with her check laid against his chest. The scent of her hair filled his nose and only now did he realise she had been standing in the middle of sandstorm. Darkness had fallen on Jakku, and there was nothing to see but a wall of battering sand on all sides.

It was nothing compared to the turmoil within him. He let his arms fall around her, loosely at first, and then tightly, as if he could protect her from the storm and the misery within her. 

It was too much.

He tried to step away, and then found his arms were empty and the storm had vanished. He was alone in his quarters, breathing as hard as if he’d been sprinting. Every muscle in his body seemed to tremble and he let himself slump into the edge of his bed to try and master his emotions. 

He was glad she had not truly been in the room. If that was how she affected him when she was on the other side of the galaxy, he simultaneously dreaded and longed to know what it would be like to hold the real girl in his arms.

Belatedly he touched the communications panel at his bedside and waited for it to connect. “Are you there?” he asked.

“We’ve located the Millenium Falcon,” Saphis’ voice answered. “We can ambush the girl when she returns and bring her in.”

“No, leave her. Return to the Supremacy at once. We’ll see what she does next.”

 


	7. Welcome Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise SO MUCH for the stupidly long delay. I feel like I haven't had a chance to sit down and write until this week. (I'm on holiday right now, enjoying the cold and the rain and a boyfriend who keeps stealing my laptop - DOES HE NOT UNDERSTAND I NEED IT TO REYLO??)

The viewport was freezing against her cheek. When Rey awoke, she found half her face had gone numb with cold. She roused slowly, her thoughts as thick and heavy as her body felt and she looked around, a little confused how she’d ended up in the lower quad-laser turret pit, sleeping against the circular viewport of reinforced glass beneath the operator’s chair. Below her was an endless sea of emptiness and distant stars, and she continued to look down as the memories of the previous day filtered back in.

There was still flecks of blood on her arms and clothing, dried and black like a scattering of unpleasant freckles. She scratched at them absently. Her thoughts were instead on the faces of the scavengers she’d cut down… although she couldn’t really remember what any of them looked like, remembering only the impression of their snarling expressions or their wide, terrified eyes. She shuddered to think of Unkar Plutt again. When she did, she felt a flush of rage that was still so hot she knew she would kill him if she saw him again. She knew she wouldn’t even regret it. Not ever.

After she had left the empty landscape where once had stood her home, she had gone back to the AT-AT that had been her most enduring habitat. Unguarded and unlocked, the place had been sacked of any useful supplies. Her cache of rations had vanished, the more precious bits of scrap that she’d kept aside for herself had gone, and only the utterly valueless items remained - her old doll wound from strips of dried straw, her Rebel helmet, and on the floor beneath the shreds of her old bed, she found the holopad full of her stories. These were, incidentally, also her most precious belongings, and so she brought them aboard the Falcon, arranged them around her pallet in the cargo hold and realised as she flew away that there was finally nothing left on Jakku for her.

She was glad to be away from there, but she felt a million miles from anyone and anything. There were no coordinates logged in the autopilot. The ship merely drifted.

BB8 had made a few stabs at tempting her out of the gun turret. He popped his head down and reminded her that there were messages from Finn and Rose waiting for her on the communications console. He fibbed that the hyperdrive was on fire. He even turned on his stereo speakers, tuned into a galactic music station, and played her a banging tune which Poe usually liked to listen to when he was feeling low. But when the music stopped, Rey had not moved and did not seem that into the music at all. The droid was about to roll away despondently, when Rey finally spoke.

“I think my mother used to sing to me,” she said. “I’ve been lying here trying to remember… and I don’t know if what I’m remembering is real or not. I don’t know if going back to Jakku unlocked some memories or my imagination is just filling in for memories I no longer have. But I remember a song. I think I remember her voice.”

After a tentative pause, BB8 beeped a quiet inquiry.

“Yes, I suppose I can’t lie here forever,” said Rey, easing her stiffened body away from the viewport and in the direction of the refresher. 

She scrubbed herself lethargically, rubbing soap through her hair to dislodge the sandgrains and picking at her nails to remove the embedded black blood beneath their tips. She thought if Kylo Ren came upon her now, she wouldn’t have the energy to be embarrassed or annoyed. So it was just as well that he didn’t. Rey hummed to herself quietly as she washed until the last discoloured sud washed down the drain and the water finally drained clear. In the time it took to bathe, her clothing had been washed and auto-dried, though the laundry program couldn’t fix the tears she’d received during her fight. Rey had not spent over ten years caring for and clothing herself without ever learning to be proficient with a needle and thread. 

Wearing little else but her underclothes, she went to sit in the cockpit with her tunic spread across her lap. She hunched over in the low light, looping her needle through torn seams in tiny, neat stitches that were hardly visible. She hummed as she worked, still unable to shake loose that old thread of a song that had haunted her dreams last night.

Before long it dawned on her that she was not alone. Someone was sitting silently in the co-pilot’s chair.

Rey glanced across curiously and found Kylo staring ahead into the middle distance, his hand curled into a fist near his mouth. That he wasn’t speaking to her made her think that perhaps he was not alone. He looked like a man in a meeting, bored but trying to look attentive. Rey caught his eye and though she didn’t know why… she found her lips twitching into a faint smile. It was just a greeting without the need for speaking, and a little pleasure at some human company. She bent her head over her work once more, threading the needle back and forth until the shoulder of her dark linen tunic was mended with nothing but a pleat remaining where the tear had been. Then Rey began to work on the other side. She would need a matching pleat there too.

Throughout this, Kylo hardly moved. She thought she heard him speaking softly to someone at his side, but for the most part he said nothing. Rey continued to work and in the quiet began to hum again. Kylo appeared to take no notice. If he minded, he did not or could not say so. 

“Why don’t you just get new clothes?”

Rey glanced up at him, faintly startled by the sound of his voice. Perhaps he wasn’t in a meeting after all?

“It’s not like I have piles of money lying around for new clothes,” she murmured, biting off the thread. The only clothes she had not made for herself out of scraps had been gifts, either from Leia who had seen how cold Rey was in the more temperate climate of the Resistance Base and had ordered up a suitable jacket from the lost and found room, or from the Caretakers on Ahch-To who seemed predisposed to grudging benefaction. Between grumpily maintaining the old temple, the old women insisted on clothing and feeding Luke and Rey with irritable exasperation, clearly under the impression that they were too helpless to look after themselves.

“It’s not like I buy my clothing either,” retorted Kylo.

The mental image of Kylo trudging around glossy core world mall with shopping bags bulging beneath his cloak was an interesting one. Nevertheless, Rey could only imagine that all he had to do was snap his fingers for new clothes in every shade of black to appear. “Well, we can’t all have armies of servants ready to provide a new wardrobe whenever the fancy takes us,” Rey said dryly.

“Don’t complain. You’re the one who turned all that down,” he said.

“That was hardly a complaint.” Rey couldn’t think of a more unpleasant way to live than to be waited on and watched every moment of the day. She was convinced by her small observations that Kylo enjoyed it even less.

Beneath her heel, the comms panel began to flash and beep. Rey jerked her feet off the console, worried she’d knocked something accidentally, before realising someone was actually calling her on a secure channel. Rey paused just long enough to wriggle into her newly mended shirt before blowing the dust off the old camera lens and accepting the call.

Leia’s face swam into view on the small screen. She was squinting. “Rey?”

“It’s me.”

“Finally. You’re proving difficult to reach. I was calling all yesterday but every time that droid kept telling me you were in the refresher. For six hours.”

Rey glanced over her shoulder at BB8, who was wheeling backwards out of the cockpit quietly. His evident attempts to cover up Rey’s trip to Jakku had been well meaning, but surely he could have come up with a better excuse than that!

“Gotta watch what you eat at some of these layby stations, I guess,” said Rey vaguely.

Leia was an excellent judge of lies, and judging by her faint smile, she didn’t buy this one at all. Yet she seemed willing to allow Rey some privacy and let it slide. “How are you, Rey?”

Rey’s mind sketched through the events of the previous few days and the faces that wouldn’t leave her - Plutt’s agonised expression as she pushed into his mind, her father’s unhealthy face, her mother’s bitter, unhappy one. “Well enough,” she said to Leia, realising she did not want to share these new thoughts and experiences.

“I won’t beat around the bush, Rey,” said Leia. “Is Ben with you?”

Rey felt a prickle of shock the bluntness of the question. “I’ve not met with Ben since I left,” she answered honestly.

“I don’t mean that. Are you linked with him right now? Can he hear our conversation?”

Rey looked around carefully. The co-pilot’s seat was empty now. She felt perfectly alone. “It’s just you and me.”

“Good. I’m heading to Port Midas tomorrow with some Resistance members. I want to meet you there. There’s something we need to discuss.”

“What is there to discuss?” Rey asked, feeling contrary. “You told me it would be better if I left, and now you want me back? I don’t-”

“This isn’t an invitation to return, Rey, but I need to meet you. Finn, Poe and Rose will be there too.”

Bribery. Rey had to admit that it was hard to pass up an opportunity to see her friends again. She’d been incredibly lonely at times aboard this ship, half waiting for nothing more than the next time she would see Kylo and talk to another person.

“I’m sending the coordinates. Please come.”

Leia signed off. Rey looked at the numbers she had sent, and it would be an easy matter of plugging them into the autopilot, but she hesitated. Her decision had not been made yet.

Rey occupied herself with busy-work, fixing herself an evening meal and dedicating far more time cleaning up afterwards than she normally would. Then she decided that BB8 was looking very grubby and needed a polish, which meant finding cloth and a tin of compatible wax and another hour rubbing the small but very happy droid until he shone like new. BB8 declared that Poe would be amazed when he saw him - he might not even recognise him!

Which made Rey realise that she was indeed going to Port Midas tomorrow to make sure at the very least that BB8 got to see his friends too.

Rey set the coordinates in the autopilot and finally went to bed. 

In the warm cargo bay, the air was close and Rey folded her day clothes in a pile and snuggled beneath her blanket in a comfortable nightshirt. All that cleaning had worn her out and she found herself skating on the edge of sleep very quickly, where conscious thought teetered toward dream.

Someone else was in the bed, she noticed. She could feel the heat at her back and hear the breaths he took. She came awake a little, turning to peek over her shoulder at the large man in her bed - or was she in his bed? Beyond her little cargohold seemed to be another room, black as the depths of space, where the blanket wasn’t her soft grey one but a rough black one that draped over his naked torso. Was he naked all the way down, she wondered idly? He was facing away, so she could not tell if he was awake too.

Rey was either too tired to care or his frequent intrusions had become so common now that intruding right into her bed didn’t seem quite as alarming as it once might have been. It was even something of a comforting feeling. She turned back on her side and drifted off to sleep, far quicker than she might have done in the company of anyone else.

* * *

 

Port Midas was a three mile platform that floated above an ocean world where it was just low enough in the atmosphere to step outside and breathe, but high enough in the clouds that the air was cold and made one slightly giddy. The main export of Midas were the precious metals that filled the ocean floors, which tended to draw representatives from higher end industries to the relatively small port. Rey wrapped herself in a thick cowl and went to wait in the arrivals lounge; an elevated floor full of people and stalls and eateries, where she could sit in comfort and watch the ships coming and going below.

BB8 could hardly contain himself. He wibbled and wobbled and his lens darted back and forth, taking in the arrival of every new ship to the harbour outside. Rey watched him pensively, wondering why she was not nearly as excited at the prospect of seeing her friends. Perhaps she was just feeling a little morose. Perhaps when she actually saw them, she would remember her delight?

It was more than an hour before a sleek execute yacht came breaking through the thick clouds and slid into dock. Anywhere else, the small ship might have been conspicuous, but this one had parked right alongside a dozen other high end yachts. She knew it was the one she had been waiting for, like her gaze had been nudged toward it by some guiding force. And even though it was quite some distance away, she could make out the figures of Poe and Finn walking down the ramp, followed by Rose and Leia.

Rey tweaked BB8’s antenna and pointed silently. The droid let out an excited squeal and raced off fast enough to cause several people to dive out of the way of the speeding ball. But Rey did not move. She stayed leaning on the rail, watching the Resistance members collect in a small group on the dock, talking and pointing, gesturing to dock workers securing the ship. A few minutes later, BB8 appeared among them, practically bowling Poe over in his enthusiasm.

“Why do you look so sad?”

Rey looked up at the man standing beside her. Of course he could not see what she saw. She slid her hand along the rail toward him, a quiet invitation that he did not take immediately. When he finally lowered his hand to cover hers, their worlds seemed to merge and she became aware of a great hangar full of sleek ships and white-clad troops. Kylo’s hand anchored her, warm and large, surprisingly gentle. She saw his gaze travel down across the dock to fix on the group below.

“Ah.” He leaned on the rail. “Your friends. What a heartwarming sight.”

Someone must have asked where she was, for BB8 had swivelled in her direction abd now the rest of them were looking up at the arrivals lounge. Poe lifted his hand in a wave. Rey felt hers lift in automatic response.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Kylo asked. “To be back among your own kind? Why do you look someone’s kicked your droid?”

“My kind…” she echoed. It was hard to agree with that sentiment. All the people down there were good people - kind and selfless and dedicated to a righteous cause. Certainly none of them would murder their way through a room of people in order to violently interrogate someone to satisfy a personal curiosity…

“Did my mother relent? Did you convince her to take you back?” Kylo didn’t sound particularly impressed.

“She just wants to meet,” said Rey. “They don’t want me back. Not yet.”

“Not until you’re rid of me.”

“Mm,” Rey grunted, watching the way Poe and Finn framed Rose, all of them so comfortable around each other. Something twisted unhappily in her stomach. She could not give it a name yet.

“What does she want?” Kylo asked.

“Who knows…” Rey’s hand slid out from under his and she moved along the rail. The others were coming inside now. In a few minutes she would be with them again, and when that happened she did not want Kylo there watching like a jealous child.

Finn was the first to reach her, throwing his arms around her like he hadn’t seen her in a year. Rose dove in for a hug the moment he stepped back, and Rey couldn’t help but return their silly smiles. She should have trusted herself. Of course she would be happy among her friends again.

Poe’s greeting was more restrained, as they did not know each other quite as well as the other two, but Rey liked the way he clapped her shoulder like she was a trusted comrade. The way he smiled at her put her in mind of all those dashing portraits in the posters, except all that charm and intensity was focused on her. It had a way of making her feel a little shy.

Leia looked tired but pleased to see her. She clasped Rey’s hand like she treasured it. “You look too pale. Are you eating, ok?”

“I think so,” Rey said. She didn’t always know. After living on rations for so long, she pretty much ate whatever passed under her nose but sometimes a whole day could pass without her remembering to find food."

“Our business can wait, I think,” said Leia. “I need to rest and you young people need to catch up. We’ll meet up in the morning.”

Leia left with some of her attendants, presumably to secure rooms for the night. Poe, who was more familiar with Midas Station than anyone else, declared that the best food and entertainment belonged to Hotel Blue, and proceeded to show the way. After some gentle flirting with the woman at the desk, they were shown to the restaurant and their own private alcove.

It soon became apparent that some things had changed in Rey’s absence. There was a new closeness, almost impenetrable, between the three rebels. They must have gone on many missions together. When Finn gestured at the gold napkin rings on the table and said, “Like Amiton, right?” the other two burst into hysterical laughter. Rey smiled politely, but her fingers began to itch like she wasn’t sure what to do with them.

“What have you been up to, Rey?” asked Rose, perhaps noticing that Rey had not said much so far.

Rey did not want to talk about the crushing loneliness or the blood she had spilled on Jakku. She smiled thinly and shrugged. “Not much. What have you guys been doing?”

But they were not at liberty to say, certainly not to someone who had been specifically excluded from receiving Resistance intel. So they looked equally as uncomfortable and vague in their answers. “You know how it is,” said Finn.

“Yeah,” said Rey, and focused instead on her menu for the next few minutes. 

The food was good, just as Poe had promised. The endless parade of waitresses that came over to ask if the food was ok was quiet unnecessary, but Rey got the feeling from the way they all addressed Poe that there must have been a Resistance poster hanging up the in the kitchens somewhere.

“Rose, you have to try this,” said Finn, as he picked up some sort of fluffy morsel from his plate and brought it to the girl’s lips. Rey watched in faint fascination as Rose literally ate from Finn’s hand as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

“What is that?” asked Rose, delighted. “Spun sugar?”

“Not sure, but I’m ninety percent sure it’s meat.” Rey was ninety percent sure his hand was on Rose’s thigh.

Things were certainly not what they had been when she left. Rose and Finn were closer, and their behaviour seemed unremarkable to Poe, who had once seemed so thick with Finn, but was now more intent on engaging Rey.

“How’s the Falcon flying?” he asked. 

“Still in the air.”

“Astonishing.”

“I’ve replaced some parts. Had to.”

“The hyperdrive manifold?”

“Not yet.”

“It needs upgrading. The Falcon was the fastest ship on record, allegedly, but that was years ago. There are some junk trawlers that could outpace it now… and a ship like that - she deserves to stay on top.” His smile was generous and a bit too flirtatious. Rey felt targeted, like she was a waitress and he wanted a free drink. 

“I’ll let you fly it again if you like,” she offered.

“Maybe… it must be nice having that freedom to go where you want.”

“When you’ve got nowhere to go, it’s not any kind of freedom,” Rey blurted. Seeing Poe’s surprised look, she lowered her gaze back to her plate and pushed around the remaining food she had no appetite for. 

“I think I need a trip to the refresher,” Rey said suddenly, rising from the table. “Excuse me.”

“I’ll go with you!” Rose bounced to her feet.

Rey was half grateful and half exasperated by the company. She headed off across the restaurant floor to the refresher and went straight to the sink to splash some cool water on her hot cheeks. She looked up into the mirror and for a second didn’t recognise her own face. The pallor of her skin made her hair and lashes seem darker and smudges of purple underlined each eye. Her lips seemed to stand out harshly against her skin, too red, and the freckles that had once dusted her nose had almost faded out. She’d been away from the sun too long. 

“I know it’s a bit awkward,” said Rose, leaning against the wall near some colourful dispensers of emergency contraception for 10 different species. “There’s so much we want to tell you, but Leia said we shouldn’t.”

“Has she said why?” Rey asked.

Rose chewed her lip. “Not exactly. But there are rumours…”

Rey sighed and slipped her wet fingers through her hair. It was longer these days. She’d stopped tying it back and let it fall around her shoulders, more a sign that she had stopped caring what it looked like. “You and Finn seem close.”

A sly smile broke across Rose’s face. “Yeah,” she said.

“Are you… together now?” Rey asked.

“Pretty much, yeah, I think so.”

“You think?”

“Well it’s not like you sign a contract and specify a start date,” Rose said, almost laughing. “It’s just kinda happened… one thing happened and then another, and now…”

“Things happened,” Rey repeated. “You mean like…”

“Like?”

“You know… have you…” Rose sketched a gesture with her hands, but it didn’t really make sense to either of them. “I mean, have you…”

“Flown all the way to the outer rim?” Rose asked. Rey was not familiar with that euphemism, but she guessed they were talking about the same thing, so she nodded.

“Oh yeah,” Rose’s smile dimpled her cheeks. 

Rey didn’t know what else to say, and she watched Rose carefully through the mirror as she twisted her hair over one shoulder. It seemed like whole lives had changed since she left. “Do you love him?” Rey asked suddenly.

“I- yes,” said Rose, slightly surprised as if this was some sort of test. “Maybe it’s too soon to say, but it’s like a new love. I know that this thing between us will keep growing and become a real, enduring thing.”

Growing, and consuming… was that love? It sounded like a disease. Something that took over the body and the mind and ate away at you until the person you were had gone. What was the difference between love and obsession?

“We still have your blessing, right?” Rose asked.

“Of course,” said Rey, returning to wash her hands. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“I dunno, sometimes the way you look at me and Finn, it’s like…”

“Like what?” Rey snapped.

Any trace of humour left Rose’s face. “Like jealousy.”

Rey opened her mouth to deny it, but she thought twice. “You’re mistaken. If I’m jealous it’s not like you think… it’s because it’s so  _ easy _ for you. You can touch him and kiss him and tell people you love him, and that’s so normal and simple and everyone thinks it’s wonderful-”

Rey cut herself off, feeling she’d said too much. 

“And you were forced out,” finished Rose. 

“Because I talked to the wrong man.”

“Because you  _ hid _ it. Because we had to pack everything and run in a single afternoon because the man you’re talking to wants us all dead.”

Rey realised she should have kept her mouth shut. Rose was still where Rey had been months ago, burning with anger and a clear vision that their enemy was a monster, not a man. “It’s not that simple,” Rey said, too tired for an uphill battle. “I want to be alone.”

“Being alone hasn’t done you any favours recently. You don’t look well.”

“Please, Rose.”

The other girl sighed unhappily and stepped away from the wall. “Fine, but you need to talk to Leia. You need to come home.”

Rey didn’t move until the door slid shut after Rose and she found herself alone in the refresher. Well, all but for whoever was in the end stall who was staying very quiet and pretending they weren’t there. Rey decided to give them mercy and left, but since she wasn’t yet in the right frame of mind to return to the table, she lingered about the back corridors. There was a stairway leading to an upper floor and she followed it up to a length of underlit corridor lined by a railing, over which one could look down into the restaurant below.

Rey paused and scanned for the booth. She spotted Rose and Finn at once, sitting closely and talking quietly. By their serious expressions, Rey suspected they were talking about her. 

But where was Poe?

A large figure seemed to step out of the shadows to rest his gloved hands on the railing beside her. “Is your reunion everything you hoped for?” Kylo murmured.

Rey quietly watched her friends a moment before answering. “It’s not like it was. They don’t trust me, not really. And they seem to have gotten on with things quite well without me. Maybe I wasn’t that important to the effort.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain,” said Kylo. “My generals are quite elated that you’ve been separated from the Resistance. No one cheers the downfall of an individual who doesn’t matter.”

“You probably thought that would make me feel better,” said Rey flatly.

“It depends how you want to come back from this. Do you really want to keep wasting time trying to win the approval of people so determined to reject you?”

“It’s not that simple,” Rey breathed. She felt so very tired now. 

“There you are!”

Rey glanced around at the exclamation and saw Poe walking towards her with that casual smile on his face. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Am I in trouble?” she asked, although she doubted a ticking off was coming by his open, friendly expression.

“No, I just thought you might want some company,” said Poe, coming to stand beside her. “It can get a bit awkward with the lovebirds sometimes. They can forget there are other people around.”

“Mm.” Rose looked back at Finn and Rose, who had taken the opportunity of privacy to share some kisses. She quickly looked away. “It’s ok.”

“New love is a beautiful thing, but it can make you act in crazy ways,” said Poe, in a knowing sort of way. His smile invited her to share in his amusement, but she was slow to respond. “You alright, sweetheart?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just tired.”

She was awfully conscious of Kylo still standing close behind her. His fingers were touching hers again too.

“Why don’t we go back to my room? If you’re not one for crowds, we can just kick back, crack that drink locker open and watch a holo-flick? What do you say?”

“He’s trying to seduce you,” said Kylo, a terse irritation in his tone.

She wasn’t sure that was exactly what Poe was trying to do, but the focus of his attention seemed strange and intense tonight, as if he found her far more interesting than he’d ever found her before. She didn’t really understand what he wanted since Rey had never felt less lively and interesting.

“I’ve never drunk alcohol before, and I’ve certainly never seen a holo-flick,” said Rey. 

Poe grinned. “Then we definitely should do this. I would be honoured to be the one to introduce you to the forbidden delights of Prukkah Ale and galactic cinema.”

Rey felt Kylo’s breath against her ear. “The idol of the Resistance is throwing himself at you. I wonder who has asked him to? Do you think my mother might be behind this? Do you think she fears my influence so much that she’d arrange for you to meet her dashing Ace pilot?”

“Do you think I’m so unloveable that there’s no other reason for him to take an interest in me?” Rey asked him.

Poe’s eyebrow raised a fraction of an inch. “Uh… what? I didn’t say you were unloveable! You're the opposite, surely. ”

Maybe she was starting to think as cynically as Kylo because the possibility that Poe had been told to work his charm on her had already occurred to Rey. Wouldn’t it be convenient to fall in love with Poe Dameron and follow him back to the Resistance like a puppy? She could shut Kylo Ren out for good and focus on becoming the postergirl to match the posterboy, and the good fight would continue in earnest.

Rey looked up at Poe’s handsome face and felt the considerable power of his charisma trained on her, a tenth of which could charm the helmet right off a stormtrooper. Something shapeless inside her that her been striking out for definition for too long suddenly took form and an answer she had been trying to avoid rang clear. Her resolve spread through her, warming her with a thrill, like a puzzle solved. Her path had never been clearer

“Ok,” she said with a faint nod. “But I need my bag… I think I left it at the table.”

“I’ll go get it - wait right there,” said Poe, pressing a quick, hard kiss to her cheek.

Rey watched him hurry away and touched the place where his lips had met her skin. There was a pleasant tingle there that put her in mind of Rose’s description of what a perfect kiss should feel like.

She turned to look behind her, but Kylo had left her too. She wasn’t sure who had severed the connection, but she suspected it might have been herself. For a moment there, she had not been thinking about him at all.

 

* * *

 

Some silences were more dangerous than others. It took a keen eye for observation to figure out when the Supreme Leader was quiet simply because he was bored or whether a violent outburst of temper was building behind that impassive mask of a face.

The mask was precariously still today, like a fragile kind of porcelain that had already cracked and needed only the smallest movement for the shards to fall away. The bridge crew was subdued. Reports that could wait were saved for another day - one less excuse to address the man sitting motionlessly in the central chair. Some interactions were unavoidable, and one officer approached the chair with the degree of reverance owed to a savage morlock that hadn’t been fed in months.

“Sir… the planetside forward base is reporting that they are running low on supplies. They were unable to break the seige… the insurgents… they, ah, have nearly broken through.”

For a long time Kylo said nothing, staring ahead as if he hadn’t heard the man. Then he finally shifted ever so slightly. “Why do you think it is so difficult for them to put down a small, untrained group of starving fools?”

It didn’t seem like a question the officer could answer, and the man hovered and stuttered. “Th-their numbers are on the increase. Every time we lose a skirmish they take our weapons. We’re fighting against our own technology-”

“That has nothing to do with it,” interrupted Kylo. “We outnumber them fifty-to-one. They don’t have our supply chains, our resources, or our backers. Yet they refuse to disappear. Do you want to know why?”

The officer looked like he wanted to disappear into the floor.

“Because it means more to them. They’re fighting to protect their home and each other, we’re fighting to collect another week’s worth of ammunition. They are a family, and we are a machine.”

The officer was spared trying to respond when Kylo rose from his chair.

“Ready my ship. I’ll go down with my knights. The siege will be broken before the sun rises on that fort.”

The officer scuttled away to dispense his orders as Kylo touched the panel near his chair to summon the knights. They were the only ones he would trust in a battle. Stormtroopers were excellent fodder when numbers mattered, but when skill and true obedience was required, they were worthless.

As he turned to head down to the hangar, another officer found the courage to speak up. “Sir, a ship has just exited hyperspace-”

Kylo felt the recognition slam through him like the wave of pressure before an explosion. “The registration?”

“It’s unmasked… it’s the Millenium Falcon,” the officer said, and looked to him. “It’s heading directly for us. Do we eliminate-?”

“Bring it aboard - have the troops in the hangar ready!”

Kylo swept into the elevator and gripped the handrails behind him so tightly he was in danger of leaving indentations. Every second he spent in there watching the levels flash by was a second too long, but he held himself still, resisting the urge to pace and shout.

When the doors finally slid open to reveal the enormous hangar, the troops are already found their formations. He marched between their lines, eyes only on the old, battered ship easing through the barriers toward landing pad sixteen. There was no sign of a tractor beam. 

She had come willingly.

Two of his knights were already waiting and fell into step behind him, their weapons at the ready. All the automatic defences in the hangar would be trained on that ship too, along with the pistols of over two hundred stormtroopers who had ceased their drills. The normally bustling and busy space had fallen still.

Everyone knew the Falcon. Everyone knew who would be aboard. Rather than put anyone at ease, the tension in the vast room was so tense a pin drop might had triggered a firefight.

The Falcon settled and powered down. Kylo waited, fists clenched at his sides as he watched the ramp drop with a steady whine. When he saw her appear at the top, his heart jumped into his throat and seemed to beat twice as hard.

Rey blinked against the bright lights of the of hangar and descended slowly. Her face was closed, guarded, and her eyes swept the lines of stormtroopers and the turrets that tracked her progress down the gangway. Only when she finally reached the bottom did she look at Kylo. Tense and uncertain, she waited.

“You finally came,” he said, unable to disguise the pleasure in his voice. “Welcome.”

He extended his hand to her, and she regarded it with the same wariness of any half wild creature who had slowly gained the courage and trust to emerge from hiding to approach an offer of food. Surely she hadn’t come this far to skitter back onto her ship, but for a moment, Kylo wasn’t certain.

Then her small, pale hand lifted and slipped over his. His gloved fingers closed over hers and drew her toward him, and in the near silent hangar he whispered to her.

“You’re home now.”

  
  



	8. The Arrival

Rey could not take her eyes off Jedha. She’d never seen a broken planet before, cracked open like a skull split by a hammer. Continents had been blown up and out, and now swarmed in a cloud of debris that orbited the unstable world. Deep crevasses that glowed a molten red formed scars across the northern hemisphere, for despite the catastrophic damage, the planet spun on as if hoping to heal itself. But Rey could imagine the ash clouds and toxic air that must now ravage the rest of the planet. 

Why was the First Order so interested in such a doomed world? Through the viewport of her new room, Rey could see dozens of star destroyers - the bulk of the fleet, she thought. This place had to be important if this was where they had decided to base themselves.

“You’ll have everything you need here,” said Kylo, watching her. “I’ll instruct the crew that you have free movement about the ship and that they should endeavour to fulfil any of your requests.”

Since being whisked out of the hangar, Rey had not spoken. She turned slowly to look about the room - black furniture, gray walls and cold metal. She had seen many like this in the wrecks on Jakku, and knew enough to realise that Kylo had granted her the suite of a general. The lowest ranks would sleep in capsules barely large enough to sit up in. Here, her bed was large enough to sleep four people and the sheets appeared to shine like silk.

Kylo stared at her as if awaiting her approval.

The satchel Rey had brought aboard was beginning to weigh on her shoulder, and so she tipped the contents out onto the bed. She placed the doll on the table beside the bed, the holopad on the single bookshelf with the Jedi tomes, held upright by two obsidian paperweights. She glanced at Kylo and noticed he had transferred his stare to the books.

“You won’t need those here,” he said.

“It’s why I came,” she responded, placing the last of her belongings - the broken shards of the lightsaber - upon a narrow metal desk.

Rey straightened and met Kylo’s gaze, waiting for him to argue, but he only considered her silently.

“How did you find this place?” he asked her.

She shrugged faintly. “I figured it out. There are lots of public reports about your ship movements in these regions… you’re not exactly hiding yourself.”

“And why the sudden change of mind? You seemed quite set on cosying back up to the Resistance last I saw.”

Was he jealous? Rey saw that muscle tick in his jaw and wondered at the absurdity. He should have been bigger than this… better… but for all the pomp that surrounded him, he was a simpler creature than he appeared.

“I had a realisation,” she told him, folding her arms across her front. “I don’t fit there. Not right now. Poe is a very handsome, charming man, but I’m not like him. I certainly don’t belong next to him. The only path I know right now… is the one that led here.”

She saw the triumph glimmer in his face. It had been hesitant before, but now he was assured of his victory. “You know they will never take you back.”

“Your ship is full of spies for the Resistance,” she said, her gaze breaking away to settle on the unblemished lacquered floor. “They’ll already know by now. But I was never out to be part of the Resistance. Becoming a Jedi is the only thing that has ever made sense to me. Luke Skywalker knew better than anyone that they are not the same thing… and if this is where I need to be to complete my training, then here I am, regardless of what the Resistance wants of me.”

“I can’t teach you how to be a Jedi,” said Kylo.

“You have the training-”

“You’ve tasted the darkness and you didn’t turn away from it. You followed it here, to me, to this place. The Jedi as they were would have cast you out by now.”

Rey frowned faintly, and looked again at the half burning world above them. “This place… what is so different about it?”

“You don’t feel it yet.” He looked almost disappointed. “You will. And I will show you in time. I can’t teach you to be a jedi, but I will teach you power to fulfil your potential. Jedi, Sith, it doesn’t matter. You are yourself.”

It was an intoxicating thought, one that stirred something inside her. Power, after living so much of her life without it, was a freedom she had never dreamed of. It wasn’t just a freedom from oppression, but a freedom from any kind of rule. How easy and tempting it would be to abuse…

She felt Kylo drawing closer and half turned her head toward him.

“That is what you came for, wasn’t it? To learn your power?” he said quietly. “Or was it something else that you came for?”

Rey stared at a point on his chest and said nothing. They both knew what lay between them, though neither had ever put it into words. It wasn’t simple or normal or easily spoken of, but to deny it would be a lie. But it was not the truth either. She had come here in order to find her own definition… not because  _ he _ defined her.

Finally Kylo stepped away. “I’ll be gone a few hours. If you need anything, use the intercom on that wall. If you intend to explore, you will need an escort.”

“You don’t trust me?” She cocked an eyebrow at him.

“It is for your own protection. Not everyone is happy to see you aboard.”

“So it’s your own men you do not trust…” She looked away. “I didn’t realise you lacked such control of your own people.”

Without a word, Kylo turned and stalked out. Rey wondered if she’d pushed a little too hard, or if that was the normal way he left a conversation.

In his absence, the room felt larger, or Rey just had more breathing room. She looked around, examining her quarters more freely now that she wasn’t being watched and judged for her reactions. Against the far wall she spotted a modest drinks dispenser. She’d seen many like it, but non it working order. Unable to resist, she pressed one of the obliquely labelled buttons and leaned forward, mesmerised, as the plasteel plate softened and rose, forming around some kind of mould pressed up from beneath. In seconds a slim black cup had been formed anew from the plate and was being filled with a black liquid that dribbled from from a spout above it.

Rey was so impressed at the the extravagant wastage that it was a real shame that the drink tasted like ship fuel. The bitter, acrid taste was intense enough to make her screw her face up, but Rey had always loathed waste, and so she thought she had better finish it at the least, whatever it cost her. In the meantime she continued her explorations, passing by an empty wardrobe that would likely remain empty given her lack of spare clothing, and a black ceramic wash basin that seemed to be watching her and produced water very eagerly when she approached it. There was a computer panel set into the surface of the desk by the viewport, but when Rey tapped it experimentally she found it locked and in want of a password and hand print.

Resisting the urge to tinker, Rey chugged that last of her disgusting drink and decided that it was time to further her explorations beyond her dark, charmless room. She headed for the door, half suspecting she was locked in and so was pleasantly surprised when it offered no resistance and swept open for her. The person on the other side made her start quite badly, however.

For a moment Rey thought she had once again come face to face with that monster in the Takodana forest - the Kylo Ren as she had first known him to be. The jagged black robes and chrome mask were a shock to see again, until she realised that this mask was all wrong, and the person wearing it was much shorter than the original.

“Hello…” she said tentatively.

The masked figure did not respond. Rey wanted to squeeze past them, but they were resolutely blocking her exit. 

“Are you my escort?” she asked.

A curt nod answered her question.

“And who are you?” Rey demanded, deeply unsettled about the resemblance to Kylo Ren.

“Nola. Ren.” The voice behind the mask was clipped, low, and unmistakably female. 

Rey’s mouth dropped open as her confusion deepened. “Ren? Are you…” She was about to ask if she was related to Kylo, before her wits caught up and she realised what a stupid question that would be. Her next deduction wasn’t much better, because if she had come all this way only to find out that Ben Solo was already married-

“A Knight of Ren,” said the imposing woman.

“Oh.” Rey parsed that for a moment, and decided that made much more sense and made her feel only marginally less stupid. Now that she thought about it, she suspected she had heard that title before, perhaps mentioned once or twice in a Resistance briefing when she had only half been paying attention. “I’m Rey.”

“I know who you are.” The Knight didn’t sound impressed.

“Well then… I’m going to stretch my legs. You can do what you like.” Rey stepped forward and waited, almost nose to nose with the masked woman, waiting for her to move aside. And just when Rey wondered if they’d be facing off all day, the Knight took a sideways step and allowed her past.

Whatever Kylo’s esteem for her, it was clear that this Knight did not share it in the least. As Rey set off down the long corridor the Knight began to follow her, an ever present shadow that was difficult to ignore. Rey only wanted to get her bearings. A proper exploration of the ship would take weeks - it was approximately the size and capacity of a small city, home to thousands of officers and troops and was where the First Order brought their newest and youngest recruits for training.

The deck they were on now was relatively small and appeared to be deeply restricted, and after she found an engraved map on the wall she realised why. Just one floor up were the quarters of the Supreme Leader. Considering his rooms took up a whole floor, this was akin to being placed next door. Rey glanced wordlessly at the Knight who still watched her, and wondered what she thought of her leader’s special treatment of Rey. The reason for Nola Ren’s resentment might have a simple explanation.

Stepping into an elevator, Rey selected one of the larger decks for her destination and stood at the glass wall to watch the other floors  zip past. It was a little hard to focus on the view when she could feel the Knight’s stare burning into the back of her head.

“And what is a Knight of Ren exactly?” Rey asked as the hangar came into view. Far below she could see the Millenium Falcon looking small and battered compared to the large, sleek ships around it. A blink and then it was gone from sight again.

“We are the hands of the Supreme Leader. His guards.”

So there was more than one. “I see. Like Snoke’s red guardsmen?”

“The Praetorian Guards were glorified statues. We do not stand around in the light. We work in darkness. For Snoke before. Now for Kylo.”

The elevator slowed and came to a stop. Rey glanced up as the doors peeled open to reveal a harried looking officer in grey. The young man took one step into the elevator, noticed that it was already occupied by a scruffy outsider and a hostile Knight, and very smoothly remembered that this was not where he had intended to go after all, before stepping out again. The door slid shut and the journey resumed.

“You don’t really belong here, you must see that. The woman who murdered Snoke will never be accepted.”

“Ben Solo must have been difficult to accept once upon a time. Son of Senator Organa, nephew of Luke Skywalker, and a trained Jedi as well.”

“Snoke himself brought him here because he saw his incredible potential, and he proved himself. He earned his place. On the other hand, Kylo Ren only brought you here because he saw a pretty  _ qunta _ .”

Rey went cold at that word. The silence rang out in the small space and Rey didn’t know how to stop it - what could she say to that? When she finally found her words again it seemed rather too later.

“I suppose that is something you will have to take up with your boss,” said Rey. “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”

Then she turned away and said nothing further.

 

* * *

 

 

General Hux was waiting for him in the chamber beyond the hangar. Kylo still had the air filtering mask clamped around the lower half of his face which had allowed him to breathe on the planet below, and he wasn’t inclined to remove it if that meant speaking to the General. Flanking him were Saphis and Morn, who never removed their masks in public if they could help it.

“The problem is resolved?” demanded Hux, scurrying to match Kylo’s stride.

“Thirty-four problems. Resolved.” Kylo responded. “The siege is over, the base is to resume operations.”

There would be no thanks or congratulations. Hux’s sneer only deepened as he sought to immediately detract from this victory. “Your newest pet is proving to be a problem. She is roaming the ship at will - you need to keep her on a leash!”

Kylo finally ripped off his mask and flung it down as he stopped and turned to face Hux. “We have turned the Resistance’s greatest asset since Skywalker - you will address her with respect.”

“She’s a murderer walking free!”

“She was pardoned.”

“When?”

“When I decided to pardon her.”

Hux’s expression darkened. “We will see what the other Generals make of this latest development,” he warned, falling away to let Kylo proceed alone.

As soon as Hux was gone from his presence Kylo forgot him and his paltry threats. He was focused only on making his way back to the Residence deck where he had left Rey with Saphis and Morn silent tow. There was still some part of him that did not really trust that she had appeared and that when he returned to her room he would find she had gone, slipping between his fingers once more like a wisp of smoke.

Nola was in the hallway, as permanent and motionless as an obsidian statue. Kylo did not need to bother asking if Rey was inside - if she was not, Nola would not be there. He swept past the waiting Knight and the doors to Rey’s suit opened for him at once, as all doors on the ship must do.

Rey, relaxing on an angular seater blinked up in surprise. “Do you not know how to knock?”

Whatever Kylo was about to say died in his throat. Rey had changed. Her woolen rags and linen sleeves were gone, replaced by a high-necked black tunic that resisted any appearance of a single wrinkle. A wide sash belt tied it together, the ends draping over a curved hip that was rather too well outlined by the black leggings. The only colour was a flash of scarlet silk lining of the cloak she sat on. They were only items of clothing taken from various standard uniforms but he had not expected her to wear them so well or that he would have such a strong reaction. Rey was an intriguing person at the best of times, in black she commanded an even greater appreciation.

“You found new clothes,” he said unnecessarily.

“They were in my wardrobe when I returned. They’re not exactly comfortable.” The lines of her tunic were a little severe, but the loose hair that curled around her shoulders softened the effect. It would not do. She would need to pin it up if she was to be taken seriously.

“I heard you have been exploring the ship,” said Kylo. “I presume you had no trouble?”

Rey pressed her lips together, her dark eyes dropping a fraction. “I may stick to my rooms in future. I sense there is not such a friendly feeling toward me among your people.”

“Did something happen today to make you think that?” he asked sharply.

Rather than answer, Rey looked away from him. She rose in one graceful move and went to the desk. “Where did you go?”

“There were matters to attend to.”

“There’s blood on your face.”

Surprised, Kylo dragged a thumb over his brow and found dried flecks of brown came away on his glove. “It’s not mine.”

“That’s what worries me.” Rey flicked him an unreadable look but pressed him no further. It seemed she had accepted this would be part and parcel of joining him here. Instead she slid her fingers over the computer console inlaid in the desk. “I need a user account. I have no access to anything, not even the holonet.”

A problem easily resolved. Kylo approached the desk and leaned around her to touch the interactive screen. He was intensely aware of her closeness and the faint perfume of her hair. Creating a new account only took moments, but it would need her palm print. He took her unresisting hand and pressed it down on the cold glass, holding it there until the registration was complex. The second it was done he felt her tug free. She was doing her best to angle herself away from him.

Rather than move back, he leaned even closer. “Do I repulse you?” he asked softly.

After a pause, Rey muttered back, “You stink.”

Kylo smelt nothing but he could guess what kind of aromas clung to him right then - the stink of the poisonous air, the burned hair and flesh, the dried blood and the ozone of the weapons fire he’d endured. His jaw clenched in irritation. He might have availed himself of a refresher before visiting her, but she was in the wrong place if the scent of battle was offensive to her nose. 

“Astonishing how someone raised in garbage can object to bad smells,” he said.

“Yes, I grew up in rubbish and your smell has managed to appall me. What does that tell you?” She tapped curiously at the computer. “What is my level of access?”

“Full and complete.”

Her hand paused. “That’s absurd. I could access anything.”

“If that’s your desire. I would of course be notified of your attempts to access anything classified.” He watched her draw up general maps of the different areas of the ship, her fingers hesitating over those areas marked ‘ranked access only’. 

“I could forward everything here to the Resistance,” she said.

“Is that what you want to do?”

Rey didn’t answer. She stared at the screen a second more before shutting it down and turning to face him. “What I want is to train. To learn.”

The steely determination in her eye and her eagerness to learn stoked something within him. “You’ll have that.”

“When?”

“When would you like?”

Her eyes widened at the challenge and she reached behind her to seize one of the heavy jedi tomes. “I need to learn how to read this.”

Kylo somehow refrained from rolling his eyes. He wanted to tell her yet again what a waste of time the texts were. Her habit of clinging to old things that were better left forgotten was an annoying habit he would have to break her of. Yet he was quite aware that she may only have come here because of his offer to help translate the words of her silly books, and if he reneged on that now, whatever fragile trust she held for him was as good as dead. His word would be worthless to her.

It pained him to say it, but he had no choice. “I will transcribe what I remember and provide you with a dedicated program that will fill in the rest. It’ll take some hours…”

Rey’s eyes shone in faint surprise and relief. “Thank you,” she said, a word spoken with such unbidden earnestness. He found he rather liked being thanked by Rey. It was a dangerous feeling, one that might compel him to keep trying to please her.

He already had an inkling that to earn Rey’s debt would be a powerful thing. Her loyalty and sense of justice did her credit, even if it had been easily misplaced with the wrong people until now. If he could secure that loyalty for himself… she would be his.

Trying to shake the pleasing image of a loyal and obedient Rey, Kylo said, “We’ll need to present you to the Generals tomorrow.”

“Present me?” The gratitude disappeared from Rey’s face in an instant.

“If you are to be accepted.”

“I’m not here to be accepted by the First Order, and surely what you say should go anyway. If you accept me, so should they.”

Was she naive or just trying to goad him? “You know it’s more complicated than that.”

“I think your position must be more precarious than that.” Rey gave a small shrug and went to sit back down on the narrow couch. She picked up a beaten old holopad that she’d been reading before he arrived. “If that is what you want.”

“It would make things easier on yourself,” he said.

“We’ll see,” she sighed. “But I have my own request.”

“Another one, you mean.”

“If you must assign me an escort, I would rather someone else.”

He blinked in surprise. “There is no better protection than one of my Knights.”

“There is certainly no one on this ship more terrifying,” she muttered. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself… unless the issue is a matter of trust.”

“Both, obviously.” He narrowed his eyes, suspecting something may have occurred between Rey and Nola in his absence. “You should expect them to test you. They’re like dogs. They respond to strength and leadership. If you show weakness they will tear you apart.”

Rey stared at him. “It sounds exhausting,” she said.

Something about her knowing penetrating stare brought a discomfort up like an old itch. She wasn’t reading his mind, but he felt like she might have been. Finally she looked away. “And it sounds like you’ve never actually owned a dog. Your underlings sound more like flesh-eating creepers.”

“Not dissimilar.”

“And what are they exactly? Your bodyguards?” Rey asked.

He had known he would have to tell her eventually. “My students.”

“Students..” 

“Of the Force.”

After a moment of stunned silence, grim understanding resolved on Rey’s face. “Luke’s students. The ones who disappeared.”

“Some of them,” he admitted, “There are a few others who have come to me since then.”

“I see.” Her face was stony. “So I’m not particularly special here. I’m just your latest ‘dog’.”

How astonishing she would compare herself with them. Did she not understand herself? “I’ve lived my whole life without ever finding someone I would call a peer. Until I met you. I have never…” He struggled to find the correct words, and he looked down as if searching for them around him. “I want to teach you, yes. Not because you belong among my subordinates. I want to be the one to teach you, because you could be the most powerful creature in this galaxy, and I can’t think of a worthier reason for me to even be alive except to be the one who helped make it happen.”

Rey’s brow was knit together in confusion and apprehension. Maybe she didn’t trust him or believe him. For her striking clothes she was still unformed and unpolished; a diamond waiting to be cut from the rock that obscured her true beauty. Kylo wondered if he’d already said too much.

He took a step back. “Nola will continue to escort you. If you cannot handle her, you won’t last here,” he said it more harshly than he expected as he strode from the room.

The three Knights were waiting for him in the corridor beyond. Nola stood against the wall, slightly apart from the other two. Kylo stopped directly in front of her, staring down at her as she went ever more still, as if she expected to be struck.

“Nola, my most loyal Nola, most terrifying of the Knights of Ren,” he said quietly. “I know you will never let me down.”

Nola held herself utterly rigid until his shadow passed on. Saphis and Morn followed their leader without looking at her. 

There was work to do for Rey’s first lesson, and more to do to keep ahead of the Generals tomorrow. Kylo could trust Hux to misbehave, but if Rey didn’t learn the rules of Order politics then she could cause even more trouble than one malicious General. 

 


End file.
